The Brno dragon, wheel, and pinnacle

Two of the city’s symbols – the Brno dragon (or crocodile?) and the cart wheel – are to be found in the Old Town Hall’s passage; the third – the pinnacle – is on the building’s Gothic portal. The Old Town Hall is the oldest secular/civic building in the city and became a National Cultural Monument on 1 July 2024. The exact origin of the Brno dragon is shrouded in mystery, but the wheel and the pinnacle have clear origin stories in legend!

Tales from the mouth of the Brno dragon:

I just hang about here these days, with people making fun of me. But it certainly wasn’t always this way.

Long ago, I was flying west, when I looked down and saw how pretty Brno looked. So I landed. Between Lišeň and Slatina I made my home – a kind of nest – and devoured everything that crossed my path. The best food was the local stuff that carted itself into Brno for sale in the town’s markets. For example, I snacked on the ladies of Tuřany with cabbage, washed down winemakers from Mikulov with Veltliner and Blaufränkisch, and I chomped on mead-makers from Břeclav to satisfy my sweet tooth. For dessert, of course. Nor did I turn up my snout at the sheep and goats grazing all around. That was the life!

But Brno citizens saw me as a thorn in their side. They would shake with terror just hearing me roar after lunch. One day, a young butcher journeyman came to town and devised a plan to get rid of me. He begged a cowhide from the councilmen, which he stuffed with quicklime and sewed back up. And I, the stupid dragon, gobbled it up. It was so disgusting that I tried to wash out the taste with water.

I flew to the river Svratka and there I gulped down as much water as I could swallow. For a whole day, the river ran dry. And then a bubbling started inside me, followed by a whistling, knocking, and hissing. Then it went quiet for a while. Phew, I thought, that was close. A huge cracking sound quickly followed, however, and I burst into a hundred and seventy-four pieces. Some are still missing. It took an awful long time to put me back together and hang me up in the town hall passage.

So now I’m suspended here, and people just stare up at me and mock. What’s it all come to? I ask.

A crocodile from Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor?

The most frequently told legend about the crocodile is that it was donated to Brno by the Margrave Matthias (later the Holy Roman Emperor) in 1608. Apparently, he was very fond of animals and was given a living specimen by the Turks. As Matthias was passing through the streets of Brno, however, the reptile unfortunately perished, whereupon he donated its corpse to the city as a memento. The Brno authorities first exhibited the beast in Vegetable Market but retired it days later to its current location. Sadly, this story is undermined by a much earlier set of records: in 1568, 1578 and 1579, bills were issued, respectively, for the reanimation of a ‘dragon’ by a painter, and its subsequent restoration and deworming. A follow-up bill in 1584 is paid for the dragon’s dehumidification and fumigation. So it could not have been Matthias…

The Trutnov dragon?

Another legend takes us right back to the year 1006, when a large dragon was killed in the vicinity of today’s Trutnov. Later, in 1024, Trutnov’s representatives presented its skin to the young Břetislav, future Duke of Bohemia, at the provincial assembly in Brno. But wait! The ‘town’ of Brno did not exist then, and there was certainly no provincial assembly meeting at such time. The first fleeting mention of Brno does not appear until 1091, and Brno is only made a town in 1243. So it couldn’t have been Břetislav and the denizens of Trutnov…

Order of the Dragon for Brno?

One possible clue comes from Špilberk Castle. A stove tile was found here bearing the arms of the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund (the Moravian margrave in the years 1419–1423) framed with the symbol of the dragon. We know Sigismund awarded membership of the Order of the Dragon to his faithful supporters. Maybe such status was conferred upon Brno?  And maybe, too, to mark the event, the townsfolk hung a ‘dragon’s’ skin from the walls of their town hall?

Dragon or crocodile?

In 1781, wise heads of the time recommended investigating to see whether the dragon was not, perhaps, a crocodile? In the 19^th century more research followed, concluding that, for the most part, the skin was not more than 200 years old. Modern biologists have tended to concur. If that is true, the skin has probably been replaced several times already, which makes the entire question of the Brno dragon even more mysterious…

What we do know for certain

The current specimen displayed in the passage of the Old Town Hall is a female Nile crocodile. It is approximately 5 metres long and weighs nearly 200 kilos. The crocodile skin has been reinforced with a metal structure and a plaster cast. The skin is real, though its age is unknown. It has not always looked this way, however…

In the years after the Second World you could still see the creature hanging limply in the passageway – head and limbs drooping slackly down. Today’s more majestic bearing is the result of considerable renovation work carried out in 1956, when all its teeth were correctly set, its eyes replaced, and a large wooden plank, inserted by the Nazis as an attempt at repair during the war, was removed from the inner cavity. Still, the only parts of the crocodile that are not original are its teeth, eyes, and claws.

In 2024 the dragon resurfaced again at the forefront of public consciousness, this time owing to an extraordinary seasonal makeover: to celebrate Brno Christmas it received a neon jumper and spurted flames for fun. What next? History continues, share a part of it with the dragon.

And what’s the story behind the famous Lednice-Brno cart wheel?

My name is Jiří Pirk or Birk – take your pick. I come from Lednice. You must know it. It’s a tiny town almost fifty kilometres, or about 30 miles, from Brno, and these days we’ve got a great minaret to shout about. I work in Lednice as a wheelwright. That means I make wooden wheels for carts and coaches. I make a reasonable living, can’t complain.

After work, I always pop into the pub for a beer. Clears the head. One time, me and my friends were on our eighth tankard. I suppose, by now, the beer’s talking and I’m getting a bit boastful, but for whatever reason, I bet that in a single day I could cut down a tree, make a wheel from its timber, and roll that wheel by hand all the way to Brno. So I get up next morning, wondering how I’d got home to bed, and I suddenly remember this mad bet.

What a numpty! I quickly pull on my trousers and set off for the forest. Around half seven, I’ve got the tree in the workshop and have started to make the wheel. It’s completed exactly when the sun is directly overhead. Oh dear, I’m running really late. I roll the wheel out of Lednice, people gawping at me like they’ve lost their minds, and it’s off we go. In Židlochovice I manage to scoff down a couple of sausages – there’s not even time to chew. I hurry on my way to Brno. Now I can see

Špilberk ahead in the distance. It’s already after seven, and I still have a fair way to go. Phew, I just about manage it. They swing shut the town gates right behind me. The next day I get the town hall to issue a confirmation that I’d won the bet, and I leave the wheel there – I wasn’t going to roll it home!

Well, the pockets of my Lednice neighbours were a few gold coins lighter, and I swore to myself that there was no hurry to ever repeat such a wager. And the wheel? It still hangs in the Old Town Hall till this very day.

The legend of the crooked pinnacle will be told to you by its very creator:

My name is Anton Pilgram, and the gateway you’re now looking at is one of my most beautiful works. Surely, you must agree.

Although I work predominantly in Austria and Hungary, Brno is the town of my birth, which is why, when they offered me this commission, I readily said ‘yes’ to the local councillors. The work was not easy. Carving out all those statues and creating the necessary stonework took ages. And then those craven cheapskates, those pot-bellied, puffed-up scoundrels decided to cheat me by paying much less than the price we’d agreed.

And not only that! They wanted me to throw a banquet to celebrate the official opening of the gateway. All for the measly couple of gold pieces they finally gave me. Fair enough. So, that night I climbed up the scaffolding for the last time, and fixed one of the pinnacles to make it crooked. A statement of simple eloquence: now the whole of Brno could see how crooked their municipal leaders were. As soon as the bent pinnacle was complete, I packed my things and headed for Vienna – just to be on the safe side.

People tell me the councillors got the ‘point’ very well. And why wouldn’t they, when the whole town was laughing at them!

They wanted to sort out that crooked pinnacle, of course. Yes, they paid a stonemason to straighten it, but by morning the shape had returned to the way I’d carved it. A miracle, I suppose.

And what do you think? Have those municipal leopards changed their spots? Don’t hold your breath. You’ll recognise when Brno’s council leadership starts honouring its promises, because the pinnacle on the portal will straighten all by itself.

But as far as I know, the pinnacle is still as crooked today as ever.