Situated on the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1. Prague is a political, cultural, and economic hub of Central Europe , with a rich history and Romanesque , Gothic , Renaissance and Baroque architecture. The city played major roles in the Bohemian and the Protestant Reformations , the Thirty Years' War and in 20th-century history as the capital of Czechoslovakia between the World Wars and the post-war Communist era.
The city has more than ten major museums, along with numerous theatres, galleries, cinemas, and other historical exhibits. An extensive modern public transportation system connects the city. It is home to a wide range of public and private schools, including Charles University in Prague, the oldest university in Central Europe. She is said to have ordered the city "to be built where a man hews a threshold of his house".
At that time, the castle was surrounded by forests, covering the nine hills of the future city — the Old Town on the opposite side of the river, as well as the Lesser Town beneath the existing castle, appeared only later.
The English spelling of the city's name is borrowed from French. In the 19th and early 20th centuries it was pronounced in English to rhyme with "vague": it was so pronounced by Lady Diana Cooper born on Desert Island Discs in , [ 16 ] and it is written to rhyme with "vague" in a verse of The Beleaguered City by Longfellow and also in the limerick There was an Old Lady of Prague by Edward Lear Prague is also called the "City of a Hundred Spires " , based on a count by 19th century mathematician Bernard Bolzano ; today's count is estimated by the Prague Information Service at The region was settled as early as the Paleolithic age.
In the late 5th century AD, during the great Migration Period following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire , the Germanic tribes living in Bohemia moved westwards and, probably in the 6th century, the Slavic tribes settled the Central Bohemian Region.
