Prague’s Old Town Square used to contain one of the largest sundials I’ve ever heard of. Judging by reports in the local news, it just might be rebuilt too. And they’ve rebuilt this historical monument too.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, European cities built Catholic columns in their centres. The idea was to venerate either the Virgin Mary or a saint, usually in thanks for curing the plague.

See my article about the protective sundial guarding Prague for more about this.

The tradition to build columns topped with religious statues started in Imperial Rome. In 1614, the Vatican erected a Marian column in the square in front of St Peter’s Basilica, Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore¹. This helped solidify veneration of the Virgin Mary which had been re-affirmed by the Church at the Council of Trent. The trend to have such a column soon spread across Europe.

In Prague, locals built one in 1650 in the Old Town Square soon after the Thirty Years War² and used it to tell time from 1652 onwards³. This was a religious Protestants vs Catholics war. The Hapsburgs used their victory to ensure people practiced the Roman Catholic religion. The Prague column also was the third such column in Europe, after Rome and the one in Marienplatz, Munich⁴.

The religious connotations around the meridian meant some thought of the column as a symbol of Hapsburg imperialism. Nationalist forces destroyed Prague’s Marian column when Czechoslovakia declared independence in 1918². (The one in the Lesser Town Square – Male Strana Namesti – is still there.)

This is a shame as the Prague column was more than just a religious column. It was also a large sun-dial². At high noon, it would cast a shadow along the Prague meridian. From 1842, midday was announced with flag-waving in the Old Town Square³. From 1891, a cannon shot told Praguers it was noon³. 

The meridian is still there. If you stop gawking at the beautiful facades of the Old Town Square, you can see this brass strip embedded in ground.

There also are five paving stones showing the position of the original column.

The city council recently (2017) decided to rebuild the 118-tonne column using Indian sandstone⁴. The council hopes this will be complete by October 2018, exactly 100 years after they destroyed the original.

Update

It’s a year and a half later than planned, but Prague finished the construction of the Marian column during the global pandemic.

And it looks lovely

Do you have a Marian column in your town? Leave a comment below and tell us about it!

References

1. Marian Column in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore; Roman Counter Reformation Blog; 2007-04-01[↩]
2. Marian column may return to Old Town square, Prague.TV, 2017-06-30[↩][↩][↩]
3. Prague Meridian; Kralovska Cesta; (Retrieved 2019-07-25) [↩][↩][↩]
4. Prague’s renewed Marian column to contain stone from India, 2017-07-14[↩][↩]

Remember: links were correct at time of publication.