Where do the rumours end and the truth about Mucha's house in Hradčany begin? How did the Hradčany subsoil relate to the blessed age of the local prostitutes? How did a bohemian in charge of a CIA branch become a tragedy for the whole country? And the famous tragedian of the National Theatre a State Security slut? Why was a 50-year-old Prague Castle orderly mauled by bears? How did the first man to stand up to Hitler die on Czech soil? And why did Jiří Mandl, the brother of a famous actress, denounce him?
Readers will find the answers to these questions in this comprehensive book that chronicles the social history of Prague's old quarters. This time it is the whole of Hradčany, including Pohořelec, Loretánské náměstí or Nový Svět, Malostranské and Valdštejnské náměstí, but also Klárovo or the adjacent Jelení Ditch. There is also a return to Kampa, where remarkable human destinies were concentrated with particular intensity.
The author himself says: "Every house and every vault has been described a thousand times in Mala Strana or Hradčany, but no one remembers what happened in any given house thirty, forty or even eighty or a hundred years ago."
