In search of castles

I went to hear a Mass on Sunday morning in Tyn church (gorgeous and delicate and Gothic, think Disney-logo castle) in Prague town square. When I met Eyal and Lauren afterwards, we decided to spend the day visiting a couple of castle sites around old Prague.

The famous Prague castle is Hradcany, which we'd wandered through yesterday admiring the classy architecture accumulated inside over the course of a millenium or so. Today we saw some more functional fortresses. First we went south, to Vysehrad, on the opposite side of the river from Hradcany -- nowadays a public park with some walls and a great view over the countryside south of the city.

We ate the remains of our generous hostel breakfast, and speculated about why Prague seems to have such a concentration of castles.
Me: "Maybe they were built by two hostile warlords, to defend the frontier between them."
Eyal: "Maybe."
Lauren: "Maybe a king in Hradcany built a baby castle, for a son of his to live nearby."
Eyal: "Maybe."
Me: "Maybe the stretch of river in the middle was a fantastic harbour, and the castles were the north and south lines of defence."
Eyal: "Maybe."
We didn't reach a satisfactory conclusion.

Afterwards we bought a picnic lunch and took it up Vahrad, on the Hradcany side of the river, with solid walls and peep-holes and complicated antechamber defences to make it difficult for enemies to enter. Nowadays on top there's an observatory and a rose garden.