The Charles Bridge Museum in several halls of the original Hospital of the Knights of the Cross and the Church of St. Francis On many levels, visitors are introduced to bridge construction and everything related to it. It maps the history of the connection between the two banks of Prague. You can see stone building elements of bridge architecture, original craftsmanship tools, reconstruction of period construction machinery, reconstruction of the foundation of the bridge pillar in a scale of 1:2.
Here you will find a model of Prague around the year 1000 with marked fords across the Vltava River, which were essential communication links at that time. The exhibition also presents sculptures from the Old Town Bridge Tower. These are casts from molds made in the 19th century, with preserved surface modeling, before it was fundamentally damaged by polluted air. A certain specialty is the bozzetto by John of Nepomuk – the original sketch for the first real sculpture made for the bridge at the end of the 17th century.
The underground part of the Knights of the Cross Church is also accessible within the museum. Its present Baroque appearance, the work of the French architect Jean Baptiste Mathey (read Žan Batista Matej) with a Baroque grotto from the end of the 17th century, hides the foundations of the original Gothic church, the foundation stone of which was laid in 1252 by Agnes of Bohemia herself, the founder of the Order of the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star.
Part of the basic concept of the museum is also the organization of current short-term exhibitions thematically related to the Charles Bridge.
