The story
Welcome to Karlovo náměstí, or Charles Square. As you stand in this vast open space—one of the largest medieval squares in all of Europe—your eyes are likely drawn to the imposing stone structure on the northern edge. This is the New Town Hall, known locally as Novoměstská radnice.
With its high-pitched Gothic roof and its massive, seventy-meter-tall tower, it looks like a fortress of civic order. But on a sweltering Sunday morning in July 1419, these very stones were the stage for an act of violence so shocking it changed the course of European history. While many visitors have heard of the famous defenestration at Prague Castle that happened two centuries later, this spot marks the original flashpoint.
To understand why, we have to look back to the execution of the church reformer Jan Hus. His death at the stake in 1415 sent ripples of fury through the Czech people. By 1419, the religious and social tension in Prague was a powder keg waiting for a match.
That match was Jan Želivský, a radical Hussite priest. On July 30th, he led a massive, angry procession from the nearby Church of Our Lady of the Snows right to where you are standing now. The crowd was demanding the release of several Hussite prisoners held inside the town hall.
As the mob shouted at the windows above, someone inside—perhaps a panicked council member or a guard—allegedly threw a stone from a window that struck the priest’s monstrance. The response was instantaneous and brutal. Led by the future legendary general Jan Žižka, who was then just a soldier in the crowd, the mob stormed the building.
They surged up the stairs, burst into the council chamber, and seized the mayor, the judge, and thirteen city councilmen. One by one, the officials were hurled out of these high windows. Unlike the later defenestration where the victims famously survived by landing in a dung heap, the men falling from the New Town Hall were met below by the pikes and swords of the waiting crowd.
No one survived. When King Wenceslaus IV heard the news of the massacre, he was so overcome with rage and shock that he suffered a heart attack and died just a few weeks later. With the King gone, the kingdom spiraled into the Hussite Wars—a brutal, fifteen-year conflict that pitted the Czech people against the combined forces of the Catholic Crusades.
As you look up at the windows of the town hall today, notice how peaceful the square feels. Yet, the building still holds its secrets. It served as a prison for centuries, and if you look closely at the tower, you can still see the remains of the heavy iron chain that was once pulled across the street to control the flow of the city.
This building isn’t just a piece of architecture; it is a monument to the moment a city decided it would no longer be silenced, marking the bloody birth of a revolution that began with a single, gravity-defying act of defiance.