Article by Michal, founder and licensed guide at Free Walking Tour Prague
There was a time when Prague was not simply one of the great cities of Central Europe. For a few extraordinary decades around the year 1600, it became an imperial capital and one of the continent's most important centres of art, science and intellectual curiosity.
Astronomers studied the movement of the planets. Artists arrived from across Europe. Astrologers prepared horoscopes. Alchemists experimented with metals and mysterious substances. Collectors searched for rare objects from nature and extraordinary works created by human hands.
At the centre of this remarkable world was one man: Emperor Rudolf II.
Today, we call this period Rudolfine Prague.
Who was Emperor Rudolf II?
Rudolf II was born in Vienna in 1552 into the powerful Habsburg dynasty. He became Holy Roman Emperor in 1576, but the city most closely associated with his reign would not be Vienna.
In 1583, Rudolf transferred his imperial court to Prague, making the city one of the political and cultural centres of the Habsburg world. Prague Castle became not merely his residence, but the centre of the extraordinary world he was creating around himself.
Why Prague?
There were political and strategic reasons, but Rudolf also seems to have genuinely preferred the city. Under his patronage, Prague attracted painters, sculptors, craftsmen, physicians, mathematicians and astronomers from different parts of Europe.
And Rudolf himself was anything but an ordinary ruler.
He was fascinated by art, astronomy, astrology, natural philosophy, scientific instruments, unusual objects and the hidden workings of nature.
That combination would give Prague a reputation that survives more than four centuries later.
When Prague became an imperial city again
Prague had already experienced an extraordinary golden age under Charles IV in the 14th century. Rudolf's arrival gave the city another period of international importance.
Prague Castle was transformed to accommodate the emperor, his court and his enormous collections. Spaces were created for Rudolf's treasures, including the predecessors of today's Spanish Hall and Rudolf Gallery.
But Rudolf did something even more important than construct and transform buildings.
He brought people to Prague.
And some of them would change history.
Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler: looking at the sky above Prague
Imagine Prague around the year 1600.
There are no telescopes yet. The planets are mysterious wandering lights in the night sky. The structure of the universe remains fiercely debated.
Into this world came one of the greatest observational astronomers of the age: Tycho Brahe.
The Danish nobleman had spent decades making extraordinarily precise observations of the heavens. Rudolf invited him to his court, where Brahe became Imperial Mathematician.
Then another brilliant mind arrived.
Johannes Kepler came to Prague in 1600 and worked with Brahe. After Brahe's death in 1601, Kepler succeeded him as imperial mathematician.
Their relationship was not necessarily easy, but the combination proved enormously important.
Brahe possessed exceptional astronomical observations. Kepler possessed the mathematical genius necessary to understand what those observations were telling him.
During his years in Prague, Kepler developed the first two of what we now know as his three laws of planetary motion. His third law would come later.
One of the great breakthroughs in our understanding of the Solar System therefore has a very real connection with Prague.
And there is something I particularly like about this story.
When we look back at people such as Kepler, we naturally think of them as scientists. But the intellectual world of Rudolfine Prague was considerably less tidy than our modern categories suggest.
Astronomy existed alongside astrology. Rudolf expected his astronomers to prepare horoscopes, and Kepler himself practised astrology alongside his astronomical work.
Science, superstition, mathematics and belief could occupy the same room.
And nowhere is that more obvious than in the world of Rudolfine alchemy.
Was Prague really a city of alchemists?
This is where history and legend begin to mix.
Prague tourism has embraced the image of Rudolf II surrounded by mysterious alchemists trying to manufacture gold. Like many good Prague legends, however, there is some genuine history behind the image.
Alchemy was taken seriously in Renaissance Europe.
It would be misleading to imagine alchemists simply as magicians standing over bubbling cauldrons trying to turn lead into gold. Their activities could involve experiments with metals, minerals, medicines and chemical processes, alongside philosophy, astrology and ideas that today we would associate with the occult.
Rudolf was fascinated by this search for knowledge.
Prague Castle was connected with alchemical activity during Rudolf's reign, and the Mihulka Powder Tower has a particularly strong historical tradition connecting it with the emperor's alchemists. Official sources differ somewhat on the precise nature of its use – it is associated both with accommodation for Castle alchemists and with alchemical work.
This is worth remembering because of one of Prague's most persistent legends.
You've probably heard that the little houses of Golden Lane were occupied by Rudolf II's alchemists.
It's a wonderful story.
Unfortunately, it isn't true.
Golden Lane was indeed created during Rudolf's reign, but Prague City Tourism explicitly notes that alchemists did not live there. The colourful image of an entire picturesque street populated by imperial alchemists belongs largely to Prague's later mythology.
Sometimes the real Prague is more interesting than the legend.
Edward Kelley: alchemist, magician or fraud?
Few people embody the strange atmosphere of Rudolfine Prague better than Edward Kelley.
Kelley was an English adventurer who came to Central Europe together with the famous scholar and occult philosopher John Dee.
His claims were extraordinary.
Kelley claimed to possess knowledge connected with the Philosopher's Stone and the transmutation of base metals into gold. Stories surrounding him also involved elixirs, spirits and mysterious methods of communicating with the supernatural.
Eventually, Kelley attracted Rudolf's attention and enjoyed considerable success in Bohemia.
For a while.
His remarkable career would eventually collapse, and his life ended far less gloriously than it had begun.
Was Kelley a genuine experimenter? An occultist who believed his own claims? A brilliant showman? Or simply a fraud who understood exactly what wealthy patrons wanted to hear?
More than four centuries later, that question remains part of what makes him so fascinating.
Prague traditions also strongly associate Kelley with the house U Osla v kolébce – At the Donkey in the Cradle – in Malá Strana, where he is said to have had another laboratory.
It is an appropriately strange address for one of Rudolfine Prague's strangest characters.
Rudolf's Cabinet of Curiosities
Not everyone attracted to Rudolf's Prague was looking for the Philosopher's Stone.
The emperor was also one of the great collectors of his age.
At Prague Castle he assembled an extraordinary Kunstkammer – a collection of art, natural wonders, scientific instruments and curiosities.
But don't imagine a little cabinet filled with a few unusual souvenirs.
Rudolf's collection contained paintings, sculptures, precious stones, scientific instruments, books, drawings, coins, natural specimens and extraordinary objects produced by some of Europe's finest craftsmen. It became one of the great princely collections of Renaissance Europe.
To a Renaissance ruler, collecting such objects wasn't simply a hobby.
Collections like Rudolf's brought together the wonders of nature, human craftsmanship, art and science. They reflected an ambition to understand the enormous variety of the world and the relationships between its different parts.
In a sense, Rudolf was trying to collect the universe.
The strange face of Rudolf II
One of my favourite surviving images from Rudolf's world doesn't look like an imperial portrait at first.
Look at Giuseppe Arcimboldo's famous Vertumnus, and you see a face composed entirely of fruit, vegetables and flowers.
And yet the face is Rudolf II.
Arcimboldo transformed the emperor into Vertumnus, the Roman god associated with seasons and transformation.
Today it can look amusing, even surreal. But the portrait fits perfectly into Rudolf's world – a world fascinated by transformations, nature, strange combinations and hidden meanings.
Rudolf's court also attracted major artists including Bartholomeus Spranger, Hans von Aachen, Roelandt Savery and the sculptor Adriaen de Vries.
Rudolfine Prague wasn't only a city of astronomers and alchemists.
It was also a city of extraordinary art.
Where can you find Rudolfine Prague today?
This is one reason I find this period so enjoyable to explore as a guide.
Rudolfine Prague isn't confined to a museum.
You can still walk through its geography.
Start around Prague Castle and Hradčany, where the imperial court was centred.
Continue towards Pohořelec and the neighbourhood associated with Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, and suddenly the scientific revolution stops feeling quite so distant.
Walk through the quiet streets of Nový Svět, immediately behind the monumental world of Prague Castle, and you are passing through another neighbourhood connected with the people and stories of Rudolfine Prague.
Then descend towards Malá Strana, where the story becomes darker and stranger as you encounter places traditionally associated with Edward Kelley.
What I particularly enjoy is that these places aren't isolated historical curiosities.
Together, they tell the story of a city in which astronomy, astrology, art, mathematics, alchemy and imperial ambition existed side by side.
What happened to Rudolfine Prague?
Rudolf's Prague didn't last.
The emperor's later reign was increasingly troubled by political and family conflicts. He gradually lost power and died in Prague in 1612.
His extraordinary court dispersed.
His famous collections did not remain intact either. Works were removed, transferred or scattered after his death, with further major losses during the Thirty Years' War. When Swedish troops entered Prague in 1648, many remaining treasures from Rudolf's collections were taken away.
The remarkable concentration of artists, scientists and intellectuals that had gathered around Rudolf's court was gone.
But the period left Prague with something much harder to remove.
A reputation.
More than four centuries later, we still associate Prague with astronomy, alchemy, mysterious experiments, eccentric scholars and hidden knowledge.
Some of those stories are documented history.
Others have grown considerably in the telling.
And separating one from the other is half the fun.
Discover Rudolfine Prague after dark
Four centuries later, traces of this extraordinary period can still be found around Prague Castle and in the streets below it.
Rudolfine Prague is one of the themes of our Prague After Dark – Astronomers, Alchemists & Hidden Hradčany tour.
Instead of following the busiest routes through the historical centre, we explore Hradčany, Nový Svět and Upper Malá Strana, uncovering stories connected with Brahe, Kepler, Rudolf II and the mysterious Edward Kelley.
And in my opinion, there is no better time to enter their world than after dark.