Lapidarium

Spent part of the afternoon at the Lapidarium - stone cutting museum.  It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but still interesting.  I was the ONLY person there.  The nice lady at the desk gave me a booklet in English and directed me to room 1 where the oldest objects were, dating back about 1000 years.  Then I proceeded through the rest of the rooms moving forward in time.

 Most of the statues on the Charles Bridge are now replicas of the originals.  Most of the originals were in this museum.  See above and below.  Some had been damaged by shrapnel in wars, others had been vandalized over the centuries.  Several were literally swept off the bridge in a massive flooding of the river in the mid 1800s (including the one above that must be 12+ ft tall and weigh a ton!)

 The statue of Marshall Radecky below was made of Italian guns that were melted down after a war in the 1850s.

These pieces below are all that remain of a massive fountain that was in the old city square dating back to the 1500's  The city ordered it to be destroyed in 1862 and only a few fragments remain (its carved marble). Pieces of it were found in the foundation of the gas company building when it was renovated in 1932.