Tea at Trianon: Prague’s Café Mozart

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Prague’s Café Mozart

From Prague Post:

The Café Mozart in Prague is described by the Grand Hotel as being the only place where “the twelve apostles will wish you for breakfast a good morning,” because of the Café’s unique first-floor view onto the magnificent fifteenth-century Astronomical Clock on the south wall of Prague’s Old Town Hall. It is a claim not unlike the caption for the image in the seminal photographic book, “Praha” by Jiri & Ivan Dolezal, taken looking down from the Tower of the Old Town Hall onto the gathered crowds below: “Waiting for the Apostles.” The Café Mozart plays recordings of Mozart’s music, houses a unique collection of French clocks and Meissen porcelain and offers homemade cakes, even Mozart tortes, in the shape of spinets and pianos. The Café seats eighty on two levels and holds regular concerts of classical and jazz music, with a four-course menu. With a touch of charm, the extensive range of coffees have names such as ‘Coffee Idomeneo,’ ‘Coffee Figaro,’ ‘Coffee Papagena’ and of course, ‘Coffee Mozart,’ the latter of which is 7g lungo coffee, served together with a Mozart ball. (Read more.)