Literary stand‑up “Station of Words” with Ivan Tolstoy. What Is the Bastille to Us? July 14 in anger, blood, and anecdotes.

“The Prague Book Tower” continues to develop new event formats and introduce audiences to unusual cultural spaces across the city.

We are launching a series of four evenings with philologist and literary historian Ivan Tolstoy — hosted in the atmospheric Foyer Café at Prague’s Main Railway Station.

What Is the Bastille to Us?
July 14 in anger, blood, and anecdotes.

The guillotine worked with such speed that, to the delight and horror of the crowd, severed heads quickly filled the baskets. The executioner would lift them by the hair and display them to the assembled spectators. They say some of those heads still cursed with living lips and damned their executioners. And some — at the bottom of the baskets — furiously gnawed at the wicker rods.

Think it’s nonsense? What about headless chickens? They can run halfway across the yard on sheer inertia.

One Frenchman made a grim joke: the person who knows the history of his time best is the executioner.

What is the Bastille to us? Upon closer inspection, it turns out to be almost everything.

Ivan Tolstoy

Start time: 18:30
Open seating