Climbing slowly up the steep slope, you'll come at last to Prague Castle, with its characteristic silhouette highlighted by the St. Vitus Cathedral contained within. This symbol of more than a thousand years of history of the Czech state and the principal monument of the Czech capital was founded at the end of the 9th century. It was founded as a small Romanesque city by the first christian prince of the Przemysl family, Bořivoj, and became the principal residence of that dynasty. The Castle became the central seat of power in 1158, when Vladislav II took the Czech throne by succession. It's highest point, however, came under the reign of Charles IV, when the Castle became the Imperial Seat for the Holy Roman Empire in 1344. After a turbulent history in which power was held by Vladislav Jagelon, the Habsburgs, and Rudolph II, as well as the violent upheavals of the so-called Defenestration of Prague in 1618, the rout of the Czech Lands at the Battle of White Mountain, and the Thirty Years War, the Castle was reduced to an occaisional residence of the Imperial Court. Not until 1918, when Tomáš G. Masaryk, the first President of Czechoslovakia, took office, did Prague Castle once again become the seat of power. There are now more than thirty sites you can visit in the Castle open to the public.
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