Prague was twice the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, and it has never quite stopped behaving like one. Charles IV gave it a university, a new town, and a bridge built to outlast his dynasty; two centuries later Rudolf II filled the castle above with astronomers, alchemists, and cabinets of curiosities. What makes Prague rare is how much of this survived. Where Berlin and Warsaw were flattened and Paris rebuilt itself, the Gothic and Baroque city still stands in tiers above the Vltava, largely as its builders left it.
