Old Town Square

Welcome to Old Town Square, one of Europe's most beautiful public spaces, and also one of its most haunted. Look down for a moment. Those 27 white crosses set into the cobblestones are not decoration. Each one marks where a man was executed on June 21, 1621.

It started at 5 in the morning. Count Slik from Cheb climbed the scaffold first, followed by 26 others: noblemen, knights, and ordinary burghers who had all dared to resist Habsburg rule. Thousands of people were held back by soldiers as the executions continued for 5 hours straight. Some men prayed. Others defied their executioners to the very end.

When it was over, Habsburg revenge still wasn't finished. 10 severed heads were locked in iron cages and hung from the Bridge Tower for years, a visible warning to anyone crossing the river into the city. This was not just a mass execution. It was the deliberate end of Czech independence, and the beginning of nearly 3 centuries of Habsburg rule.

Protestant churches were converted, the Czech language lost ground to German, and thousands of intellectuals fled the country, most never returning.

One man was spared the blade: city clerk Mikuláš Diviš had his tongue nailed to the gallows for an hour, then was released. He survived and could speak again, which raises the question of what exactly he chose to say after that.