On the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the birth of Emperor Charles IV, the National Technical Museum is preparing an exhibition in the main museum building in Prague’s Letná district, which will present the issues of construction at the time of this eminent ruler and builder (more about the exhibition here). Among other things, the exhibition will also feature replicas of medieval construction machines – a pedal crane and a battering ram designed for pile driving during the foundation of buildings. The production or repair of these replicas takes place in the premises of the Court of Building Crafts in the Centre of Building Heritage Plasy.

The public has already had several opportunities to get acquainted with the medieval crane, built using traditional technology according to the illumination in the Václav IV Bible. It was exhibited in 2006 at Prague Castle and in the following years it worked mainly at the castles of Točník and Kost. Now its author, master carpenter Petr Růžička, is repairing it in Plasy and preparing it for the aforementioned Karlovy Vary exhibition.

At the same time, however, a completely new functional replica of the medieval ram is being created here, which is also produced using traditional craftsmanship, including the dimensioning of the proportions of the machine using circular geometry.

Work takes place virtually every day in the upper yard of the Court of Building Crafts, and the gates are open to those interested in the honest craft of carpentry!