HDR Photography
While Kilkenny Castle has its share of nooks and crannies, the grand hall that is the Red Room really shouts, “Castle interior!” This roof is apparently not original—a beautiful later addition (and a practical one, given how the first roof evidently leaked.)
Venturing beyond Dublin, we visited Kilkenny Castle. Though an imposing manor from the outside…
…The rooms and passages inside were bright and decorated for the season.
Stepping to a window, the scale of the grounds become apparent.
The castle is the other way! Of course, this sightseer is aiming in just the right direction to see the Dancing House upriver.
It turned out that, after a week of bland gray skies, I wasn’t the only person attracted to Prague Castle on a beautiful afternoon.
Okay, so it’s not a real alchemist’s quarters. Nonetheless, I was chuffed to find antique chemical apparatus when visiting the medieval quarters of Prague Castle.
While Prague Castle’s position on a hilltop is apparent from the south side, the opposite side of the fortress is equally isolated from its surroundings by a steep and wooded hillside.
I’ve long looked to capture gradients from nature to civilization in my images, but I think this one captures a gradient, instead, through time. The foreground, among the Royal Gardens of Prague Castle, seems so ancient in contrast with Old Town in the middle-distance and the twentieth-century additions to the city on the horizon.
This greenhouse was adjacent to the Royal Gardens in Prague Castle. Though I assume that its mission is to nurture and prepare specimens to join the garden, the exotic incongruity of a geodesic cylinder amid centuries-old castle grounds makes it a far more exciting find than I expected.
The compactness of European cities, particularly ones like Prague that are situated in valleys, leads to these kinds of spectacularly vertical spaces. Each street seems to be stacked nearly on top of the next.
On the hilltops above those city streets, inside Prague Castle, the space continues to be used efficiently.
Above the castle structures, the spires of St. Vitus Cathedral continue the verticality.
So many of our days in Prague were gray and overcast; the rooftops were the main source of color.
On the second-to-last day of our week, however, blue skies and sunshine finally revealed a city of far more vibrant hues.
St. Vitus Cathedral is at the heart of Prague Castle and just as grand as words like “cathedral” and “castle” imply.
Inside was thoroughly saturated with visitors.
By comparison, much of the rest of the castle seemed empty. Given that this was the winter “refresh and repair” season, we weren’t surprised.
Strolling down the stairs from Prague Castle at dinner time sure feels a lot easier than making the reverse trip earlier in the day.
Prague Castle stretches the length of a long, narrow hilltop above the city that has (archaeology shows) has basically been a fortress since prehistoric times.
The Vltava River turns every cityscape of Prague Castle into a dramatic set of reflections.
Looking onto the scene from the Charles Bridge, those reflections seem to be all around.
The hilltop above Prague, now the site of Prague Castle, has been continuously inhabited since prehistoric times. Events of enormous historic importance (like the Defenestrations of Prague) happened via windows looking out on a very similar view.
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