Prague Castle, Prague: Fun Facts & Family Guide

Built in the 9th century, it's the official residence of the president of the Czech Republic.

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In 1618, a group of angry Protestant nobles marched into a room in this castle and threw two royal officials and their secretary out the window. The drop was about 17 meters.

All three survived. Catholics said angels caught them. Protestants said they landed in a pile of manure.

Either way, the Thirty Years' War started because of it, and it tore Europe apart for a generation.

The castle sits on a hill above the Vltava River in the Czech capital. Prince Bořivoj founded it around 880, choosing the spot because it was easy to defend and overlooked the river crossings.

He was the first Christian ruler of Bohemia, and the first stone building here was a church. More churches followed, and by the 10th century the castle was home to both the ruling prince and the bishop.

The most important building came much later. In 1344, King John of Bohemia laid the foundation stone for a new Gothic cathedral dedicated to St. Vitus, and his son Charles IV drove the project forward.

Charles wanted a cathedral to rival the great ones in France. He got one, but not in his lifetime.

Work stopped and started for centuries. St. Vitus Cathedral wasn't officially finished until 1929, nearly 600 years after it began.

Kings, Holy Roman Emperors, and Habsburg rulers all made the castle their seat. When the Habsburg Empire collapsed at the end of World War I and Czechoslovakia became a country in 1918, the new government moved right in.

Since then, the castle has been the seat of the president. Its first, Tomáš Masaryk, hired an architect to modernize the old palace and gardens for its new role.

Today the castle covers nearly 70,000 square meters, and Guinness World Records lists it as the largest connected castle complex in the world.

Walk through St. Vitus Cathedral and look for the chapel of St. Wenceslas, its walls set with more than 1,300 semi-precious stones. Find the window in the Old Royal Palace where the officials were thrown out. Then wander Golden Lane, a row of tiny colorful houses where castle guards once lived.