ahoj-hoj or bohemian rhapsody

PfRC is taking a few days of vacation in the Czech capital. Please be sure to follow our continuing adventures on our little travel blog. In the meantime, here is an interesting point to ponder: the ancient city’s host of kings and emperors are famous for their patronage of the occult arts and sciences, like alchemy, astrology and numerology, through a few highly visible landmarks, like the Astronomical Clock or the dormitories and workshops of the royal hermeticists on the Golden Row below Prague Castle, but there is also a more subtle homage to the esoterical. The pedestrian bridge spanning the Vltava (Moldau) was realized at 0531 in the morning on 9. July in the year 1357, when the bridge’s namesake (Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV) personally laid the first foundation stone. The precise time is known because this palindromic timestamp (the same forwards and backwards, 135797531) hewn into the bridge tower was picked by court astrologers as the most auspicious time to start building the bridge.  I wonder what other mystical symbols might be hiding in plain sight.