The Lane Where They Were Said to Make Gold

This picturesque and curious corner was called the Golden Lane because alchemists who made, or wished to make, gold were said to have lived in it. In truth, however, so fine a name was given in jest to a lane that was narrow and once probably very unclean — to this day there are only two of the places every house requires for all seventeen little houses. The houses here are very modest and interesting for that very slightness; one of them is called At the Guardian Angel, and the smallest house in Prague is perhaps number 19. Apart from one little house there are sixteen buildings here along the old wall, most of which arose only in the seventeenth century, when the castle marksmen, that is the guards, were permitted to set up dwellings along the rampart wall. As early as 1597 the Emperor Rudolf II gave permission, for the better keeping and security of the castle, that the vaulting in the castle wall facing the garden be divided among the marksmen who kept watch at the castle gates; twenty-four of them were quartered in this part. Those red-clad marksmen were disbanded under Joseph II, when the prisons in the towers were abolished, and their last captain was Arnošt Šiška of Jarmolice.