Malostrana Cemetery

Just like the Olsany Cemeteries, the cemetery in Malostrana (the Lesser, or Little Quarter), otherwise known as Kosire Cemetery, was established during the plague epidemic of 1680. In it's eatern corner, there stood a small chapel dedicated, like the one in Olsany, to the patron Saint of plague victims, St. Rochus, and a plague cross was also erected here. Credited with founding the cemetery, located on Plzenska street in Kosire, is doctor and professor at Charles University, J.B. Mikan.

The cemetery at Malostrana didn't serve this purpose for very long however - it was consecrated in 1686, expanded in 1863, but then closed already in 1884 and replaced by a cemetery in Malvazinky. Today, you can find old gravestones with German, Latin and Czech inscriptions, always overgrown with ivy and only occaisionally lit by the flicker of candles.

Current visitors to this abandoned cemetery, which provided Jan Neruda with scenarios for his collection Cemetery Flowers, as well as for one of his Malostrana Tales, can look on the final resting places of such notables as the foremost architects of the Prague Baroque, the Dienzenhoffer father and son - Kristof and Kilian Ignace. A smallish oval disc reveals the grave of F.X. Dusek, pianist and composer, and his wife Josefina, pianist, harpist, and especially chamber singer, who hosted Johann Wolfgang Mozart in Prague, a couple hundred meters from the graveyard, at Bertramec. Mozart also dedicated the aria Mia bella fiamma to Josefina. The cemetery also became the final resting place for other musicians and painters - for example, Adolf Kosarek and Josef Hellich.

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