Amadeus | Leopold Gate, Vyšehrad — the cart carrying Mozart out of the city

Rain, a plain cart, a handful of mourners who turn back at the edge of town. Mozart's coffin goes out through a city gate and on to a common grave, and the film lets the moment pass with the same indifference the city showed. That gate is the Leopold Gate at Vyšehrad in Prague.

It was built in the 1670s as part of the Baroque citadel raised over the old Přemyslid stronghold, designed by Carlo Lurago and given a carved stone front: a Habsburg eagle above the arch, lions on either side, military trophies cut into the sandstone. Carts and carriages passed under it for two centuries. It is one of the few places in the city where a period funeral procession could be filmed without hiding a single anachronism, because there is nothing modern in the frame.

Vyšehrad is a public park now, free and open at all hours. The gate stands between the outer Tábor Gate and the rotunda of St Martin, and beyond it the fortress walls run out to a terrace above the Vltava.

Walk out through the arch rather than in, in the direction the cart went, and keep going to the ramparts. Half of Prague opens up below — the same city that, in the film, has already stopped listening.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC-licensed view of the Leopold Gate, Vyšehrad, Prague.