A Vow to Turn Away the Plague

On the upper square stands a column twenty metres high bearing a group of the Holy Trinity, made in 1715. Before that a great plague had raged in Prague: on Saint Wenceslas's day in 1713 two hundred and eighty-five people died in the Lesser Town in a single day, and divine service was held not in the churches but in the squares. The councillors therefore vowed, to turn the plague away, that they would set up a statue of Saint Wenceslas on that spot; but by the emperor's order a group of the Holy Trinity was placed there instead.