Emperor Charles IV believed the world would end in his lifetime. And he intended for Prague's New Tow to play a big role in the Apocalypse.

Emperor Charles IV believed the world would end in his lifetime.

If you lived in medieval times, Doomsday was always just around the corner. Emperor Charles IV was not only a firm believer in astrology, but he also thought that the end times were near. And the emperor wanted to make Prague the centre of events when the Apocalypse came to pass.

One of his biggest projects was the creation of Prague’s New Town, a planned urban development right outside the city walls of what we now call Old Town. The official start date for the neighbourhood was March 8, 1348. So it hasn’t been “new” for quite some time. The district incorporated existing villages that were then outside the city and encased them all together behind a defensive wall.

Another name for the neighbourhood was New Jerusalem, and this wasn’t just an idle PR move. Charles IV planned the district loosely on the outlines of medieval Jerusalem. A common idea of the time was that when the Apocalypse occurred, God would come to Jerusalem to sort out those who would go to Heaven from those who would be sent to the other place. Some maps from the 1200s depict Jerusalem as the centre of the world.

Crusades had been waged to keep control over Jerusalem. But by 1302, the Crusaders had definitively lost their hold on any part of the Holy Land. Christians at the time believed that God would, of course, be coming to a Christian city to sort out the Apocalypse. A new destination had to be established, and preferably located in Europe firmly under Christian control.

The race was on to create a holy city to be the venue for Doomsday. Charles IV was the most ambitious but certainly not the only ruler to dabble in the New Jerusalem idea. Some French rulers tried to call Paris the New Jerusalem, and other places strewn between Ethiopia and Moscow also vied for the honour.

But Charles IV went all in. He not only made a whole new neighbourhood, but he tried to gather together the best and largest collection of holy relics to entice the various saints and heavenly spirits to visit. During his reign, the imperial treasury acquired several items allegedly from the Crucifixion. Forgeries of such items were common, but at the time, they were held to be authentic.

These relics included a nail from the Crucifixion, a piece of wood from the True Cross, thorns from the Crown of Thorns, a piece of sponge, and leather from a whip. The main item was the so-called Spear of Destiny, which was held by St Longinus, the name traditionally given to the Roman soldier at the Crucifixion. The most dubious of these relics is a handful of straw supposedly from the manger where Jesus was born.

He planned for Prague’s New Town to have three main squares, with the Cattle Market (Dobytčí trh), now called Karlovo náměstí, as the intended main square.

If you roughly compare maps of medieval Jerusalem to New Town, then Karlovo náměstí correlates with the location of the Temple of Solomon – closer to the outer edge than the centre. Originally, the finest homes in the district surrounded the square.

To this day, it remains one of the largest city squares in Europe. The name Karlovo náměstí, meaning Charles Square, dates from 1848. (Prague’s neighbourhoods were not joined together into a single city until 1784; before that, they were separate entities.)

In reality, the Cattle Market was always second to the Horse Market (Koňský trh), now called Wenceslas Square. The latter is still a popular destination for shopping and recreation while Karlovo náměstí is usually empty save for some of the city’s less fortunate people who congregate there and office workers eating a brown bag lunch. The district’s third market square, the Hay Market (Senný trh) is now Senovážné náměstí, and the least successful of the three.

The centre of the Cattle Market used to have the Chapel of Corpus Christi, which was built to showcase the Crown Jewels and the best pieces of the vast collection of holy relics. The original version built by Charles IV was a wooden tower, though descriptions aren’t very clear. This was replaced with a larger stone chapel completed in 1393 by Wenceslas IV, the son of Charles IV. It was in the shape of an eight-pointed star.

A pilgrimage called Feast of the Spear and the Nail took place on the first Friday after Easter, with people coming from across Europe to see those relics. For most of the time, these relics were safeguarded in the keep at Karlštejn, a large castle built by Charles IV not far from Prague.

People who died during the pilgrimage could be buried in the graveyard surrounding the chapel, which was seen as quite an honour at the time.

This chapel, standing in the spot that corresponds to the Temple of Solomon, seems to have been where Charles IV intended to host God when he arrived to preside over the coming Apocalypse. The square would have been the main gathering place to sort souls for the Final Judgement.

And Heaven wasn’t going to be some far away ethereal place full of invisible ghosts. The chosen few would live eternally on earth in this new holy city that was designed specifically for this purpose. The number of people going to Heaven was not large, so Prague would have been big enough to hold everybody.

One common interpretation of the scriptures puts the number of the Heaven-bound at just 144,000 souls. So people living or buried in Prague would be near the start of the line.

The chapel was at the centre of a large cross made up of five churches: One line has the Church of St. Adalbert and the Church of St. Catherine. The other is marked by the Church of St. Stephen and the Church of St. Wenceslas. The chapel was approximately where these lines intersect.

The cross, in theory, could be seen from overhead but this was of course long before air travel or drones. So only some sort of angelic being looking down would be able to see it. But fans of sacred geography have noted several other large and small crosses made by linking up various religious structures across Prague, and some are bound to be just random chance.

Needless to say, the Apocalypse did not happen in the 14th century. The annual pilgrimage eventually ended but nobody seems to be sure exactly when. The chapel was deconsecrated in late 1782 under the religious reforms of Emperor Joseph II and used as a warehouse for a few years before being torn down in 1789. The square still has the ornate Church of St. Ignatius, built in the middle of the 1600s. The two churches stood side by side for just over a century.

The stones were reused for other buildings in the area, but no records were kept as to what went where. Tram tracks now run over where the outer edge of the chapel used to be. Track renovations occasionally uncover leftover bits of stonework. A survey in 2011 to plan for renovating the square uncovered several graves.

The Crown Jewels are now kept in the tower of St. Vitus’ Cathedral in Prague Castle, and shown once every few years on state occasions. The line to see them is often several hours long. Most of the relics from the Crucifixion are at Karlštejn and the Spear of Destiny is now in Vienna, though the Czech National Museum has a copy that it sometimes displays.

The empty coffin of St. Longinus is in a side chapel of the Basilica of Sts Peter and Paul at Vyšehrad but his bones were lost centuries ago, either during the Hussite Wars or when a boat transporting the stone coffin capsized.

Many Prague churches still have relics that date back to the era of Charles IV’s obsessive collecting. Several churches have entire skeletons, while others have bones and bone chips in elaborate displays. The Czech Republic though is one of the least religious countries in the world, and with a few touristy exceptions, the churches are closed most of the time save for Sunday services.

Several other legends are associated with Karlovo náměstí. The Faust House is at the south side of the Square. It was allegedly a home to alchemists like Edward Kelley and a poor student is supposed to have lost his soul to the devil there. On the north side of the square, New Town Hall has one of the original measuring sticks for the city, and a corrupt city official who falsified measurements is supposed to haunt the tower. The square also has one of the city’s plague columns, put up after an epidemic ended.

Three cards in The Tarot of Prague feature images from Karlovo náměstí. Parts of murals from a residential building can be seen on the Four of Wands and the King of Wands. A wooden panel in New Town Hall features on the Nine of Cups. In addition, the Prague Castle’s mosaic of the Last Judgement is on the Judgement card in the Major Arcana.