Charles Bridge

What it is

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. Prague City Tourism records that it replaced the Judith Bridge, wrecked by the flood of 1342; work on the new crossing began in 1357 under Charles IV and finished in 1402. The foundation stone was laid on 9 July 1357 at 5:31 in the morning, a moment chosen so that the figures read 1 3 5 7 9 7 5 3 1, a scale climbing to nine and back down. Petr Parléř took charge of the construction and died before it was done. The finished bridge is 515.76 metres long and 9.5 metres wide, built of sandstone blocks on sixteen vaults with spans between 16.62 and 23.38 metres. For five centuries it was simply the Stone Bridge or the Prague Bridge; the name Charles Bridge came into general use only around 1870. Floods took pieces of it repeatedly — five pillars in 1432, damage again in 1784, two pillars and three vaults in 1890 — and each time it was repaired rather than replaced. Cars last drove across it in 1965. What a visitor crosses today is a medieval roadway with a Baroque sculpture gallery standing along both parapets.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

Thirty statues and sculptural groups stand on the balustrades. Prague City Tourism dates the carving of them to the years between 1683 and 1928, with most of the group made between 1706 and 1714. The oldest still standing in its original form is the bronze St John of Nepomuk of 1683, set up on the three-hundredth anniversary of his death — an anniversary its donor miscalculated, since Nepomuk was drowned in 1393. The last figure to arrive was the group of St Cyril and Methodius in 1928. Most of the saints are sandstone, St Philip Benitius is marble, and the Calvary and the Nepomuk are bronze. Many of the figures on the parapet are copies: originals lost to flood or weather went to the National Museum's Lapidarium or to Gorlice at Vyšehrad, so what is photographed on the bridge is often a nineteenth- or twentieth-century replacement standing in for a Baroque one. The knight Bruncvík keeps his own pillar at the Malá Strana end; only his pedestal is old, the knight being Ludvík Šimek's copy. Towers close the bridge at both ends — Parléř's Old Town Bridge Tower, built as a ceremonial gate for royal coronation processions, and at the far end a Romanesque tower of the twelfth century remodelled in 1591 beside a taller Late Gothic one, joined to each other by a gate.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

How long to spend

Forty minutes is the duration this guide records, and it assumes the crossing is the visit rather than a way of getting somewhere. The deck is 515.76 metres end to end, which is a seven-minute walk at a normal pace; the other half hour goes on stopping. Realistically a visitor halts four or five times — at the Nepomuk with its polished bronze reliefs, at the Calvary, at the Bruncvík pillar, and once in the middle to look upriver at the castle — and each stop costs longer than expected because the person ahead is doing the same thing in the same metre of space. Anyone crossing at eleven in the morning in summer should add ten minutes for sheer congestion. A climb up a bridge tower is a separate commitment: Prague City Tourism states that the Old Town Bridge Tower has 138 steps to its viewing gallery, and between the queue at the ticket desk, the stairs and time spent at the top, half an hour per tower is a fair allowance. A visitor who wants the bridge without the crush should plan the walk twice, once early and once after dark, rather than trying to stretch the single crossing.

Checked 2026-08-26

Season and crowds

Prague City Tourism publishes no opening hours for the bridge itself — the seasonal tables on its site belong to the two bridge towers, not to the deck. For the Old Town Bridge Tower it lists daily hours of 10:00 to 18:00 from January to March, 10:00 to 19:00 in April and May, 9:00 to 20:30 from June to September, 10:00 to 18:00 in October and November, and 10:00 to 19:30 in December, with no weekly closing day; the Lesser Town Bridge Tower keeps the same table. Shortened hours are published separately around Christmas and New Year. That June-to-September opening at nine in the morning is the useful one, because it is the only season when a tower can be climbed before the bridge below it fills. The bridge is at its emptiest between first light and about eight o'clock, and again late at night, when the gas lamps are the only light on the statues. Midday between roughly ten and five is when tour groups, buskers and portrait sellers take up most of the width, and a photograph without strangers in it stops being possible. Winter mornings are cold and often foggy over the river, and they are also the quietest daylight hours of the year here.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

Prague City Tourism publishes no admission price for Charles Bridge. Its page for the bridge carries no ticket section at all, unlike its pages for the towers, which carry full price lists — so nothing on the operator's site indicates that walking across costs anything, and no figure is recorded here. The towers are ticketed and their prices are published. The Old Town Bridge Tower is 250 CZK basic, 170 CZK reduced for children aged 6 to 15, over-65s and ZTP card holders, 200 CZK for young people aged 16 to 26, and 500 CZK for a family of two adults and up to four children; children up to five enter free, as does a ZTP/P card holder with one companion. The Lesser Town Bridge Tower is cheaper at 200 CZK basic, 130 CZK reduced, 160 CZK for 16 to 26, and 400 CZK family. A combined ticket for both towers is 340 CZK for adults, 230 CZK reduced and 680 CZK for a family. Prague City Tourism runs an early bird discount of 50 per cent off admission during the first hour after opening every day, and states that it is the only official seller, at its own ticket offices and online through the ColosseumTicket network.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Getting there

No car is needed and none is possible: the bridge is mapped as a pedestrian way with motor vehicles, motorcycles and all other vehicles prohibited, and cyclists are required to dismount. It is approached on foot from both ends. On the Old Town side the funnel is Karlova, the narrow lane that winds down from the Old Town Square and ends at Křižovnické náměstí under the Old Town Bridge Tower; the nearest metro station is Staroměstská on line A, five minutes away, and trams 2, 17 and 18 stop at Staroměstská and at Karlovy lázně, the stop closest to the bridge on the embankment. On the Malá Strana side the bridge lands on Mostecká, which runs up to Malostranské náměstí; Malostranská is the metro station, again on line A, and trams 12, 15, 20 and the historic line 42 serve that side. The deck is paved in sett — cobbles set in courses — and is tagged as wheelchair accessible along its length, though the surface is rated only intermediate for smoothness and the stones are uneven. A staircase built in 1844 drops from the bridge to Kampa island on the Malá Strana side.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

The paving is the first thing. The deck is laid in setts and the stones have been worn, relaid and worn again; they are hard on thin soles, treacherous when wet and worse in frost, and a heel goes into a joint easily. Wear something flat with a sole that grips. The second is the crowd, which is not a queue but a slow two-way current with photographers standing still inside it — keep a hand on anything in an outside pocket and expect to be jostled while stopped. The third concerns the towers rather than the bridge: Prague City Tourism states plainly that the Old Town Bridge Tower is not barrier-free, so the climb to the gallery is out for anyone who cannot manage 138 steps, and that visitors under 15 may enter only with an adult of 18 or over. The fourth is where tickets come from. The operator states that it is the only official seller, at its own offices and through the ColosseumTicket network, and that tickets bought through other channels may not be valid; a tower ticket from a street seller is not worth the risk. Finally, no opening hours or admission are published for the deck itself, so anything a third-party site states about either is unverified.

Checked 2026-08-26

Photography

Everyone photographs the same view and almost nobody gets it, because the picture that works needs the deck empty and the deck is only empty at two hours of the day. First light from the Old Town end gives the towers, the statues and the castle in one line with the sun behind Petřín rather than in the lens; the same frame after ten in the morning is a wall of shoulders. The other hour is late night, when the bridge is lit by gas lamps — the only listed monument in this guide that still is — and the light comes from below the statues, which is why they look theatrical after dark and flat at noon. Shoot the sculpture individually rather than as a row: the Nepomuk reliefs are rubbed bright by hands and hold detail, and the Calvary reads well against a pale sky. For the bridge as an object rather than a place, leave it. The 1844 staircase down to Kampa puts a photographer under and beside the arches, and Křižovnické náměstí gives the Old Town tower whole. From the tower gallery itself, 138 steps up, the deck is seen along its length with the river on both sides.

Checked 2026-08-26

Where it is

Nearby

External links

• View on Wikidata