The 27 crosses in Prague's Old Town Square: what do they mean?

This article is about a public execution. We tell it without any cruel detail.

Where are the crosses?

They're easy to walk straight over. You'll find them in the cobbles of the square, running along the Old Town Hall, the building with the astronomical clock. There are twenty-seven crosses, together with the symbol of swords and a crown of thorns. If you count them, you may well get twenty-eight: we'll explain why further down.

When the clock sets its figures moving, everyone's eyes go upwards. The crosses ask for the opposite: look down, and count.

Why were they executed?

The story begins three years earlier. In 1618 the Bohemian Estates, meaning the nobles and towns that had a say in governing the kingdom, rose up against the Habsburg emperor. They opened with a famous scene: two of the king's governors and a secretary thrown out of a window at the Castle. We tell that story in The Defenestrations of Prague.

The rebels went as far as choosing a king of their own. The gamble was settled in 1620 at the White Mountain, a hill on the edge of Prague, and they lost. As battles go, it barely amounted to a skirmish. The aftermath was far more serious: punishment, carried out in full view, in the city's main square.

Who were the 27? Not all of them were lords

On 21 June 1621, twenty-seven leaders of the uprising were put to death outside the Town Hall. Twenty-four were beheaded and three were hanged. Three were great lords and others were knights. But the largest group, seventeen of the twenty-seven, were burghers: townspeople. The uprising had been the towns' business, too, not just the nobility's.

There was one more name on the list. Jan Sixt of Ottersdorf, condemned like the rest, was pardoned at the last minute.

One of the men who died was Jan Jesenius, a physician and rector of Prague's university, who had been the first to carry out a public dissection in the Czech lands. In 1601 it had fallen to him to give the funeral oration for the astronomer Tycho Brahe, in the Týn Church, whose two towers rise above the square. Twenty years later he died a few steps away.

Another was Kryštof Harant, a knight and a traveller. He spoke seven languages, and in 1598 he'd made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Egypt, which he later turned into a book. His brother-in-law, Heřman Černín, went with him. When the uprising broke out, Harant and Diviš, Heřman's brother, tried to bring him over to their side. Heřman refused: he was a Catholic, loyal to the emperor, and he became the emperor's captain of the Old Town. According to his biographer, his post obliged him to attend the execution in which his friend and his own brother died. One family, split down the middle in the same square.

What happened to the heads?

The punishment didn't end that day. Twelve of the executed men's heads were put on display as a warning high up on the Old Town Bridge Tower, on the side facing the Charles Bridge. They remained on show for over a decade. None of the sources we've read explains why those twelve were chosen.

In November 1631, with Prague occupied by the Saxon army, Protestant exiles came back. According to the history published by the Týn parish, they took the heads down and carried them by night, in procession, to that church. The same source says they were buried by an altar, supposedly with no witnesses. In 1766 the altar was remade; the coffin was taken out, and nobody knows where it went. Another version places them in St Saviour's Church, in Dušní Street. Where they are today, we don't know.

27 or 28 crosses?

The list of the condemned was longer than the list of the executed. Besides Jan Sixt, the man who was pardoned, there was another condemned man who never reached the square: the lawyer Martin Fruwein, who died two weeks before the execution. That's why the number that went down in history was twenty-seven. In 2011 a Czech art group, Ztohoven, placed one more cross in the paving in his memory. Some historians consider it justified, and Prague's tourist board now speaks of 28 crosses.

How old are the crosses?

The crosses aren't from 1621. According to the city's tourist board, the spot was marked in the paving in 1904, when the square was repaved, and restored during the renovation completed in 1987. Before that, nearly three hundred years without a single marker. An online encyclopaedia, without saying where it got this from, dates the present crosses to the works on the Town Hall after the Second World War. The two versions aren't incompatible, and on the one thing that matters they agree: the remembering came long after the punishment.

On that 21st of June, the emperor left no doubt about who ruled Prague. The punishment was meant to be seen by everyone. Centuries later, the city answered in the same language: with a sign in full view, in ground that anyone can walk on.

Fact or legend?

• Fact: on 21 June 1621, 27 leaders of the uprising of the Bohemian Estates were executed in front of the Old Town Hall; seventeen were burghers, and one was the physician Jan Jesenius. Another condemned man was pardoned at the last minute. Twelve heads were displayed on the bridge tower for more than ten years.
• Not from 1621: the crosses. The spot was first marked in 1904; one source with no references dates the present crosses to after 1945.
• Fact: there was one more condemned man, Martin Fruwein, who died before the execution. His cross, the twenty-eighth, was added in 2011.
• According to his biographer: that Heřman Černín, because of his post, attended the execution of his brother and his brother-in-law.
• We don't know: where the twelve heads are today.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells this story on Prague's free route, "The Old Town: from the Powder Tower to the Astronomical Clock": a complete route of ten stops, from the Municipal House to the astronomical clock, all of it heard from the street. The eighth stop, "Twenty-seven crosses", is heard beside the crosses and begins with a short warning. The next one stays in front of the Town Hall that saw it all.

The twelve heads have a stop of their own, "Twelve heads without a grave", on the route "Prague Legends: from the Old Town to the Charles Bridge". Harant and the Černín brothers appear on "Malá Strana: from the Charles Bridge to the Foot of the Castle", in front of the palace that grew out of the houses confiscated from Harant, at the stop "Two friends on opposite sides". And if you're planning your trip, our Prague guide has the practical side covered.

Further reading

• Česká televize, ČT edu, "Staroměstská poprava 1621" (in Czech): https://edu.ceskatelevize.cz/namet/staromestska-poprava
• Prague City Tourism, "Old Town Square": https://prague.eu/en/objevujte/old-town-square-staromestske-namesti
• Římskokatolická farnost u kostela Matky Boží před Týnem (Týn parish), "Bodová historie Týnského chrámu" (in Czech): http://www.tyn.cz/cz/index.php?stranka=bodov-historie-tnskho-chrmu
• Prague City Tourism, "Old Town Bridge Tower": https://prague.eu/en/objevujte/old-town-bridge-tower-staromestska-mostecka-vez/
• Jaroslav Krupka, "Cestoval s Kryštofem Harantem do Svaté země. Pak Černín dohlížel na jeho popravu", Deník, 24 July 2026 (in Czech): https://www.denik.cz/historie/cestoval-s-krystofem-harantem-do-svate-zeme-pak-cernin-dohlizel-na-jeho-popravu/
• Prague City Tourism, "28 křížů" (in Czech): https://prague.eu/cs/objevujte/27-krizu-staromestske-namesti/