Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/42

32 contains on the first floor, a shop which has preserved all the details of interior appointment from the XVIIIth century,,, [sic] and is a prototype of the business houses of that time. Right and left there are other remarkable buildings, especially those of the „three harts“ and of „the black eagle“ at the right side with many baroque ornaments. About half way up the street we see the palace of the Counts Kounic (No. 277) the former residence of the late sterling patriot countess Eleonora Kounic. This is a very noble building, adorned by a lofty attic with a collection of beautiful statues, and by a balcony over a splendid porch, which forms a nice prospect for the opposite entrance into Joseph’s street. Passing a few houses further on, among them a well-known brewery „u Hermannů“ and an unimportant large modern dwelling house, the property of a „Záložna“ (Saving-bank) we see a pretty turret window at the opposite side, under it a long vista of characteristic arcades, and we turn to the most typical space of contemporary Prague the Malostranské náměstí (Small-town-square). Two wide projecting turret-windows of the houses above described, form here a frame to one of the most effective views of the Small town. The centre is taken up by a rather small house of greenish hue, in the parterre of which there is an old coffee-house „at the field-mareshal Radecký“. It is a modest building, but it has an interesting façade dating from the XVIIIth. century, a pantile roof and a balustrade ornamented with fine vases and statues. And above it tower still higher, the pantile-roofs of neighbouring houses, and beyond them, the looming majesty of the finest cupola and spire of the Small-town, the chef d’oeuvre of Ignatio Kilian Dienzenhoffer, the church of St. Nicolas. By this observation is brought to our mind, how masterly, with what conscious and well considered decorative finesse these grand objects were placed behind those lower houses in order to accomplish an effect of harmonious beauty. The architect knew what he was doing when he employed these gradual propositions, the whole impression is actually enchanting; we may say fascinating, like a scene on the stage. The beauty of the scenery is raised by an effective foreground, filled here in the narrowest part of the square by the monument of a Bohemian soldier, field-marshall