My summer trip to Prague has been tentatively scheduled for the first weekend in August (depends if my friend is free, but it looks she should be).
As both my friend & me like doing sightseeing, we will surely visit some nice and interesting places. A few suggestions have already been made, nothing definite planned yet. However, there are many good choices in the city and I know that no matter where we go, I will be impressed enough.
While thinking about it, I realized that I have never been to the amazing 16th century Star Summer Palace while I lived in Prague. How odd! The palace is located a bit farther from the centre, so I must have forgotten about it. Even though once I walked somewhere nearer the place and spotted it hiding among the trees on top of the hill.
Definitely a must-see on my trip! Read below how very cool it is:
"From the plans it follows that the Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol based the design of the building on the ground plan of the so-called Star of Solomon, the magic image of two intersecting equilateral triangles. In its totality the image expressed the perfect coupling of the four elements. Undoubtedly, the building was an expression of both a Hermetically conceived analogy, in which an element (star) represents the whole (cosmos), and a syncretism interconnecting individual branches of traditional sciences, such as astrology and alchemy, with the mythological concepts of the ideas of the pantheon of the Antiquity."
--
“The Star's three aboveground levels and the one in the underground can he understood as an echo of the four traditional elements of the ancient laboratories—as is already expressed by the ground plan itself. The element of the Earth (¥) corresponds to the underground labyrinth; the motifs belonging to the element of Water (V) are preponderant in the changeable and multifaceted decorations of the ground floor; the second floor is dedicated to Air (A); and, finally, the large hall of the third floor, over the ceiling of which towers the pyramids spire of the roof, corresponds to Fire (A). Individual levels in the building also represent the group of four characteristic phases, through which the spiritualizing matter gradually passes in the course of the Opus Magnum. Accordingly, black goes with the underground, as it is the place of the initiation and symbolical death. On the ground floor, the alabaster stucco directly insinuates the state of the so-called albedo, the attainment of the Philosophers' ''white stone.” No records concerning the original colours of the other two floors have survived. However, according to traditional symbolism, lemon yellow would correspond to the second floor, and the purple of royal power, the colour of the Philosophers' Stone, or the prevailing red on the original tiles of the hall (rubedo) would correspond to the unpartitioned third floor."--
Here's a couple of interior shots of the ground floor.
More details on this unique and remarkable piece of architecture can me found
here.
grateful![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
nostalgic
curious
hmph