- Deer Moat; lamp post all the way on Mariánské hradby street
Deer Moat
Atop the Deer Moat hillside, near Prašný most, a memorial was unveiled on 4 May 1946. Made of Slivenec marble and topped with a long bronze pinnacle, the memorial was designed by the architect Otto Rothmayer. It commemorates a mass murder of civilians that occurred on the north side of Prašný most, near Deer Moat, adjacent to the Prague Castle premises, on 8 May 1945.
Twenty-one captured Czech insurgents and civilians were brutally killed there, most likely by the Waffen-SS garrison at Prague Castle or the German armed forces in Dejvice. Following imprisonment, these individuals were murdered and their bodies mutilated. Eleven of them could be identified. The Deer Moat murders are part of other massacres carried out by the Nazis during the Prague Uprising. (Masaryk station, Prazacka, Úsobská street, The Massacre in Lahovice, Dejvice station)
The fighting also left traces on several nearby buildings. The most severe damage occurred on 9 May when the Germans retreated, and shots fired by their tank struck the Renaissance building of Lví dvůr (Lion’s Court) on Prague Castle’s premises. Furthermore, the Ball Game Hall in the Royal Garden was set ablaze by a grenade. Despite the immediate intervention of firefighters, only the peripheral walls remained. The Ball Game Hall was reconstructed in 1952.
Monument to the fallen in the 1945 revolution in Deer Moat, with St Vitus Cathedral in the background; a photo from 1948. Museum of Prague, photo by Bohumil Černý.
One of the victims murdered by the Nazis in Deer Moat at Hradčany; 8–9 May 1945.
