Prague was once home to Carnevale celebrations

Prague was once
home to Carnevale
celebrations that
rivalled Venice’s
own extravagant
revelry. Today the
Czech capital is
reviving its most
vibrant winter
festival, in all its
Baroque glory
Behind
the
mask
best
weekends
away
Words Orla Thomas
Photographs Mark Read
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Lonely Planet Traveller February 2014
‘Madame Monique’, an
organiser of Prague’s
Crystal Ball, wears an
outfit designed by a
specialist in Baroque-style
costumes. opposite Snow
covers the statues and
Malá Strana Bridge Tower
of Charles Bridge,
P r ag u e C a r n e va l e
T
hrough a crack in a
courtyard door, a woman’s
pale, rouge-lipped face
appears. Exuberant
powdered curls are piled
on top of her head, her
eyes partly covered by a
jewel-encrusted mask. As a heavy bolt is
drawn, the opening widens to reveal a
tightly corseted bosom and full skirt in
creamy brocade. With a quick glance along
the dark, narrow alleyway, she extends a
gloved hand behind the door to draw out
her companions, who spill into the cold
night just as a slow drumbeat starts up.
These two-dozen revellers are on their
way to the final event of Prague’s 12-day
Carnevale: the masquerade Crystal Ball.
Men dressed in velvet doublets and
breeches offer a steadying hand to the
ladies as the elegant procession makes its
way slowly along the quiet, cobbled streets
of the Old Town. Local residents peer from
doorways and windows, open-mouthed.
‘You feel the city differently when you’re
wearing clothes like these,’ says caféowner Šárka Pospíšilová, wrapping a
fur-trimmed cape around her shoulders
against the February chill. ‘It’s like
stepping back to the 18th century.’
The venue for the ball is Clam-Gallas
Palace, a masterpiece of Baroque
architecture – popular in 17th- and 18thcentury Europe, it is a style characterised
by luxury, drama and ornate detail. This
quintessential example was built in the
early 1700s for a family of aristocrats, but
now houses Prague’s municipal archive.
Guests make their way excitedly up the
building’s grand stone staircase,
mythological figures cavorting on the
elaborately painted ceiling above their
heads. On arrival they are announced with
tongue-in-cheek formality to actors in the
role of the Palace’s former occupants,
Count and Countess Clam-Gallas, before
being seated for a sumptuous banquet.
In the central hall, authentically dim
light is reflected across a multitude of
gold-trimmed mirrors, and refracted into
twinkling shards by a vast chandelier. A
table is piled high with fruit and flowers,
bottles of Bohemian bubbly and even a
stuffed swan. As liveried servants present
course after course – two soups, wild
mushroom and aubergine terrine, a rich
venison ragout with speck dumplings – a
Bacchus figure with a crown of grapes and
a flask of wine circulates dispensing drinks
and jokes. After the meal a band of
musicians lure us into an adjacent room,
where masked figures perform a battle-like
dance. Celebrations become increasingly
playful as guests head for a turn on the
dance floor, which is later turned over to
a raucous game of musical chairs.
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Lonely Planet Traveller February 2014
The masks lend an air of mystery to the
eclectic crowd. One man, who introduces
himself as Madam Flora, is dressed in full
drag. Another turns out to be Prague’s
premier obstetrician, deliverer of the Czech
Republic’s celebrity babies. Sat opposite
at dinner is a German opera singer who
claims Czech aristocratic ancestry. Like
those at the Baroque high-society balls
from which this event draws inspiration,
the guests are Prague’s elite – those
wealthy enough to afford the £300 price
tag for a ticket and hired costume.
Carnevale’s origins are altogether
more modest. The Czech word for it is
‘masopust’ – a period of feasting and
merrymaking before the abstemious
40 days of Lent. Historically a festival
celebrated mostly in rural areas, masopust
is still marked by many Czech villages
with a ceremonial, costumed procession.
But in recent years this tradition has been
experiencing something of a surprise
revival, on the streets of Prague.
Earlier that day I had been one of the
200 or so gathered in Loreta Square, in the
Hradcany district, for a masopust parade.
The assembled costumes were a hodgepodge, reflecting the festival’s agricultural
roots, its masquerade heyday and its
modern manifestation as a populist street
party. Among the cheerful crowd was a
grandmotherly type with straw bonnet
and pitchfork, on the arm of Worzel
Gummidge’s Czech twin; a pale-faced pair
in green velvet and matching eye masks;
an Easter bunny, a pirate and a winged
ladybird – plus countless toddlers with
painted whiskers and Minnie Mouse ears.
Barmaids from a local pub, Pivnice
U Cerného Vola, were handing out
tankards of dark ale, shots of slivovice
(plum brandy) and – as is traditional –
doughnuts. A band of musicians sat in a
horse-drawn carriage soon started up, and
the crowd sang along with the accordion,
trumpet and banjo’s folksy melodies. The
procession made its noisy way past Prague
Castle and the faded, pastel rainbow of
Nerudova Street’s shop and restaurant
façades, before descending towards the
banks of the Vltava River.
At Charles Bridge, the costumed
silhouettes of carnivalgoers mingled with
those of the 30 statues of saints lining its
length. Flecks of snow fell but failed to
settle, and after a last toast to masopust,
the crowd dispersed into the city’s many
drinking dens for glasses of fortifying local
lager and warming portions of rich, meaty
stew served with dumplings. Sára Valová
wore a crown of leaves as she whirled past
unselfconsciously on the arm of a
moustachioed friend. ‘I take part in the
parade every year,’ she said. ‘I love
masopust. It’s a little bit of everything.’
Masopust revellers sport a range
of surreal masks and costumes.
below from left Sára Valová
and a friend join the masopust
parade; ball-goers are made up
in a style befitting the Baroque
era; local ales help to warm
the spirits of those on parade;
Crystal Ball guests make their
way to Clam-Gallas Palace
February 2014 Lonely Planet Traveller
63
P r ag u e C a r n e va l e
The Crystal Ball’s elaborate
programme includes a
masked dance representing
a battle between the
gods Neptune and Mars
– the latter pictured
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Lonely Planet Traveller February 2014
T
hough they prefer
the Italian term, Rostislav
and Zlatuše Müller are
equally enthusiastic
about the celebration –
self-proclaimed ‘apostles
of Carnevale’, they are
determined to revive its historic glory.
This Czech couple are co-directors of
Prague Carnevale: the annual programme
that includes the Crystal Ball, plus evening
performances of Baroque music and dance,
and a multitude of parades and feasts.
Zlatuše, wearing only a corset, bloomers
and a set of rollers, rushes about the central
hall of Clam-Gallas Palace as she prepares
the room for that night’s opera concert.
An ex-fashion model retrained as a stage
designer, she enjoys the showmanship
inherent to her role. ‘Carnevale has its
roots in the medieval period, and was once
celebrated all over the Catholic world,’
she explains. ‘Most famous of all were the
festivities in Venice.’ That city revived the
tradition only quite recently, in the late
seventies, and Zlatuše hopes that in 30
years Prague’s Carnevale will be equally
well known. ‘Like Venice, we still have all
the beautiful and historic locations where
Carnevale was originally celebrated – like
this palace and the Old Town Square.’
With an encirclement of soaring church
spires, the square was a fittingly grand
stage for one of Prague Carnevale’s most
outlandish celebrations. During the 16th
century, when the Habsburg Emperor
Rudolf II ruled the city, court painter
Giuseppe Arcimboldo was tasked with
coming up with a show to impress visiting
nobility. ‘The story goes that he built a
papier-mâché replica of Mount Etna
volcano,’ says Zlatuše, ‘which exploded to
release a parade of aristocrats, dressed up
as knights and dragons.’
But it is the lavish celebrations of the
later Baroque period that most interest
Zlatuše and her husband Rostislav.
‘Carnevale had always been a street
celebration, but the nobility of this
period created something more intimate
– holding exclusive balls in their palaces,
with beautifully crafted costumes and
performances of music, singing and
dance,’ says Rostislav. Carnevale’s
theatricality went hand in glove with
opera, an art form that became increasingly
popular during the years of Baroque.
Rostislav puts together the musical
programme for Prague Carnevale’s many
Baroque opera soirées, but is also the
creative force behind Carnevale’s official
costume supplier – Atelier Franzis Wussin,
named after an 18th-century masked-ball
producer. The boutique specialises in the
authentic reproduction of Baroque-era
masks and dress. ‘We didn’t want
A view from the top of the Old
Town Bridge Tower, on Charles
Bridge, looking east across Staré
Mesto (Old Town). above left
Zlatuše Müller in Bacchanalian
dress. above right Šárka
Pospíšilová at the Crystal Ball
February 2014 Lonely Planet Traveller
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p r ag u e c a r n e va l e
Soprano Jana
Bínová-Koucká
performs at the
Crystal Ball
to copy the Venetian Carnevale look,’
says Rostislav as he lays some of his
ornate (and sometimes eerie) hand-made
masks out on a white tablecloth. ‘We
wanted to recreate the masks and
costumes worn in Prague – the designs
for which still exist.’
Delving into the archives for this
period of Czech history was lifting the
lid on a Pandora’s box, says Rostislav.
‘The end of communist rule here allowed
for a renewal of interest in the periods
when aristocrats played an important
role,’ he says. ‘These old families
provide a continuity to Prague’s past,
so to rediscover the Carnevale
celebrations of the Baroque period...
it felt like opening a book that had for
many years been closed.’
T
he palaces that
once hosted these lavish
balls, and housed the
wealthy people who
attended them, are
scattered all over the
city’s historic centre.
However, most are to be found amid Malá
Strana’s warren of winding cobblestone
streets and pastel-coloured buildings.
That the neighbourhood sits in the
shadow of majestic Prague Castle is no
accident – noble families built close to the
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Lonely Planet Traveller February 2014
seat of power, hoping that sheer proximity
would win favour with the incumbent
emperor. Most of these grand residences
now function as government buildings,
foreign embassies or schools – but one still
remains in the hands of the family who
once called it home.
Built in the 16th century, Lobkowicz
Palace is the only privately owned
building in the Prague Castle complex and
has been the official seat of the aristocratic
Lobkowicz family for four centuries. It was
confiscated first by the Nazis during WWII,
then again by the communists in 1948,
before eventually being returned in 2002 to
William Lobkowicz, the American grandson
of Maximilian, 10th Prince Lobkowicz,
who had fled to the USA in 1939.
Now a museum, the Lobkowicz
collection is at once impressively grand
– featuring paintings by Breughel the
Elder and Canaletto – and intensely
personal. ‘Having my ancestors hanging
on the walls is interesting,’ says William
Lobkowicz as he navigates the wooden
corridors of the palace. ‘I look up and
think, “Oh, is that what I’m going to look
like when I’m older?”.’ He points out the
portrait of a female forebear who survived
the births of 22 children to live to the age
of 73, and another who has been painted
with a ring on her finger that William’s
mother still wears today.
The collection also reveals the Lobkowicz
family as great patrons of Prague’s musical
heritage – the seventh prince, in particular.
‘He treated musicians like gold, almost
bankrupting the family in the process,’
says William. The Lobkowicz collection
holds more than 5,000 musical scores and
the music room displays some of its
highlights – including a copy of Handel’s
Messiah, with a complete re-orchestration
in the hand of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The composer – along with the Venetian
writer, adventurer and womaniser
Giacomo Casanova – is perhaps the most
famous of the 18th-century glitterati
known to have attended Prague’s
Carnevale during its Baroque heyday.
Though somewhat out of favour in other
fashionable European capitals such as
Vienna, Mozart enjoyed great popularity
in Prague – a loyalty he rewarded by
premiering his opera Don Giovanni at
the city’s Estates Theatre in 1787.
Even a short stroll in Prague reveals its
multiple connections to this prodigious
musical talent. At the gates of the castle,
guards stare fixedly ahead wearing
uniforms created by the costume designer
of the Mozart biopic Amadeus. After the
fall of communism in 1989, then-president
Václav Havel hired his friend Theodor
Pištek – who won an Oscar for his work on
the film – to replace the guards’ drab
People stream
across Charles
Bridge, completed
in 1390 – it
withstood wheeled
traffic for 500-odd
years before being
pedestrianised
after WWII
February 2014 Lonely Planet Traveller
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P r ag u e C a r n e va l e
khaki with the commanding pale-blue kit
and fur hats they now wear throughout
winter. A stone’s throw from the castle,
Strahov Monastery houses an organ said
to have been played by Mozart during his
1787 visit to Prague. The monastery’s
church and library are both magnificent
examples of Baroque-era design. The
library’s Theology Hall particularly so –
its low, curved ceiling thick with curling
stuccowork and elaborate paintings.
But it is St Nicholas Church, where
Mozart was honoured with a requiem Mass
on 14 December 1791, which represents
the pinnacle of Baroque Prague. ‘In both
ecclesiastical and secular buildings, the
Baroque style had a great sense of
theatricality to it,’ says city guide Martina
Cermáková, leaning against a wooden pew
to gaze momentarily at the frescoed
ceiling, where St Nicholas ascends beyond
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Lonely Planet Traveller February 2014
majestic stone archways to a trompe l’oeil
heaven. ‘It was an aesthetic designed to
overpower the viewer – and in a church,
that meant with the glory of God.’
Decoration of the church took almost
100 years to complete, and left nothing to
the imagination. Its expertly faked marble
walls are inset with countless small niches,
each one featuring a statue of a saintly
figure in repose. A huge organ at the back
of the church is adorned with cherubs
holding real musical instruments covered
in gold leaf. At the altar, a sculpture shows
a Catholic slaying a Protestant heretic with
a giant spear. This theatrical, sometimes
brutal, Baroque style was the aesthetic of
the Counter-Reformation – an artistic
sledgehammer intended to leave the
viewer in no doubt as to the true faith.
St Nicholas was once the parish
church of Malá Strana, so it is among
this orgy of imagery that Prague’s elite
would have sat for the Lenten services that
followed Carnevale. The Roman Catholic
Church understood the limits of human
self-denial – knew that their flock would
be better prepared to endure 40 days of
restraint if they had first partaken of
enjoyable excess. Emerging from the
church an hour later, I find Prague
submerged under a thick layer of snow
that hides its subdued palette of yellows,
blues and pinks; its red-tiled roofs and
green, onion-domed churches. A blanket
of hush has been cast over the city, and
Carnevale is over for another year.
Orla Thomas is Lonely Planet Traveller’s
features editor. She particularly enjoyed
reading the messages of peace still being
scrawled on Prague's John Lennon Wall.
A Prague Castle guard sports a
uniform that harks back to the
army of the first Czech Republic
of 1918–38. opposite St
Salvator Church in Staré
Mesto was originally
built in a 16th-century
Gothic style, with
Baroque features
later added