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City guide · Czechia
Prague is a river city with a castle on one bank and the old town on the other, and the Charles Bridge between them is the reason both halves of a visit keep crossing the Vltava. About 1.4 million people live here, the twelfth largest city in the European Union, inside a metropolitan area of some 2.3 million. The historic centre has been on the UNESCO list since 1992, and in 2017 the city received more than 8.5 million international visitors, which made it the fifth most visited in Europe after London, Paris, Rome and Istanbul. Ten municipal districts, twenty-two administrative ones, and a first-time visitor will stay almost entirely inside the first.
Ranked by importance — sitelinks, pageviews and heritage status, not editor preference.
Prague Castle is not a building but a walled quarter on the ridge above the Vltava, and the Prague Castle Administration describes it as the largest coherent castle complex in the world at almost 70,000 square metres, a figure it…
Charles Bridge carries walkers across the Vltava between the Old Town and Malá Strana, and it has done so in the same stone since the beginning of the fifteenth century.
St Vitus Cathedral is the largest and most important church in Prague, and its full dedication is to three saints rather than one: Vitus, Wenceslas and Adalbert.
The Old Town Hall is the seat Prague's Old Town won for itself in 1338, when the estates obtained King John of Bohemia's approval to establish an administration of their own, and Prague City Tourism calls it the oldest institution…
The Astronomical Clock, the orloj, is mounted on the southern side of the Old Town Hall tower on Old Town Square, and it is a working machine rather than an exhibit behind glass.
The Old-New Synagogue stands on Červená street in Josefov, the former Jewish Town of Prague, and it is the oldest surviving synagogue in Europe as well as the oldest site in the quarter.
The Church of Our Lady before Týn is the parish church of Prague's Old Town, and the parish that owns it says plainly what it is not: not an ordinary public space, not a market, not a square and not…
The Old Jewish Cemetery lies behind a wall in Josefov, the former Jewish Town of Prague, and is one of the oldest surviving Jewish burial grounds in Europe.
Vyšehrad is a walled hilltop above the right bank of the Vltava, about three kilometres upstream of Charles Bridge, and it is the one major Prague sight that costs nothing to enter.
Set your days, your pace and the hours you actually want to be out. The planner works around closing days and travel time, and leaves room to eat.
