Czechia
Prague
A thousand years of European architecture left standing in one river bend, with a castle at one end and a medieval clock still keeping time at the other.
Prague came through the twentieth century with its skyline intact, so Romanesque cellars, Gothic towers, baroque domes and art nouveau facades all stand on top of each other in the same few square kilometres. Karluv most carries you across the Vltava under thirty blackened saints toward Prague Castle, which is less a castle than a walled hill town with a cathedral in the middle of it. Below on the Old Town Square an astronomical clock has been running since 1410, and in the Jewish Quarter six synagogues and a crowded old cemetery survive because the occupiers intended to make a museum of a people they were destroying.
Suggested stay
3–5 days
Language
Czech
Currency
CZK
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Prague
The stack almost nothing was bombed, so Gothic, baroque and art nouveau sit in the same street rather than in separate quarters of a rebuilt city
Karluv most cross it before seven and it belongs to you, with the castle catching the first light upstream
Josefov six surviving synagogues and a cemetery where the headstones lean twelve layers deep, in a few hundred metres of the Old Town
The beer Czechs drink more of it per head than anyone on earth, poured slowly in tiled halls where you share a table with strangers
Best time to visit
Apr-Oct
13-25° days
50.087° N, 14.421° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Prague
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Weather & when to go to Prague
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-Oct
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Prague
The winter is cold, grey and often damp with the light gone by mid-afternoon, but the bigger problem for most of the year is other people: the bridge, the Old Town Square and the castle approach are shoulder to shoulder through the warm months, and the hourly clock show is a genuine crush. The shoulder weeks either side of summer are the compromise, and walking the famous half of the city before nine in the morning fixes most of it whenever you come.
Top things to do in Prague
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Karluv most - cross it at dawn
history 👍 PopularA 14th-century stone bridge lined with thirty baroque saints gone black with age, joining the Old Town to Mala Strana between two Gothic gate towers. Empty and extraordinary at first light, near-impassable by lunchtime.
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Prague Castle and St Vitus Cathedral
history 👍 PopularA walled complex the size of a small town on the ridge above the river, holding the cathedral where Bohemian kings were crowned, a Romanesque basilica, the old royal palace with its riders' staircase, and the row of tiny houses along Golden Lane.
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The Astronomical Clock on the Old Town Square
history 👍 PopularA working astronomical dial from 1410 showing the sun, moon and zodiac against a medieval model of the heavens, with apostles that parade past two windows on the hour and a skeleton that tips its hourglass. The mechanism is the marvel; the show is short.
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Josefov - the Jewish Quarter
history ⭐ Highly recommendedSix synagogues and the old cemetery survive in a few streets, including the Gothic Old-New Synagogue still in use after seven centuries and a Moorish-revival interior of painted gold. One synagogue's walls carry the hand-written names of eighty thousand Bohemian and Moravian Jews murdered in the Shoah.
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The Strahov and Klementinum libraries
culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedTwo baroque reading rooms of a kind that barely survive anywhere: the monastery halls at Strahov with painted ceilings and globes, and the Klementinum's mirrored gallery with its astronomical tower, both seen from the doorway or on a short timed tour.
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Petrin hill
scenicA wooded hill above Mala Strana with a funicular up it, an iron lookout tower modelled on the Eiffel, a mirror maze, a rose garden and a stretch of medieval wall built as famine relief. The best full view of the city and the castle from the side.
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Vysehrad
historyThe other fortified rock, upstream and almost empty of visitors, with ramparts you can walk right round, a neo-Gothic church of black spires, and a cemetery where Dvorak, Smetana and Capek are buried under an arcade.
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Letna and the metronome
scenicA park on the bluff opposite the Old Town where the largest statue of Stalin ever built once stood; a giant red metronome ticks on the empty plinth now, and the beer gardens along the edge look straight down the river bridges.
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Beer halls, svickova and knedliky
foodPale lager poured through a slow tap with a thick wet head, drunk in tiled halls at shared tables, alongside beef in cream sauce with cranberry, roast pork with cabbage, and bread dumplings sliced with a thread. The sugared spiral pastry sold on tourist streets is not Czech.
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Kampa island and the Certovka
culture artsA quiet island under the bridge separated from Mala Strana by a narrow mill channel with a working water wheel, with a modern art collection in a converted mill, crawling bronze babies on the lawn and the graffiti wall around the corner.
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The National Gallery at Veletrzni palac
culture artsThe country's modern collection in a vast functionalist trade-fair building in Holesovice, strong on Czech cubism, which Prague practised in architecture as nowhere else did, and holding French work Czech collectors bought early.
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Wenceslas Square and the National Museum
historyLess a square than a wide boulevard running up to the museum's dome, where crowds filled the pavements in 1968 and again in 1989. A cross set in the ground near the top marks where Jan Palach set himself alight.
Best areas to stay in Prague
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Stare Mesto
First-time visitors $$$Medieval lanes around the old square
Explore hotels in Stare Mesto →
Mala Strana
Postcard Prague $$$Baroque palaces below the castle
Explore hotels in Mala Strana →
Vinohrady
Neighbourhood life $$Leafy grid, good eating, real residents
Explore hotels in Vinohrady →
Zizkov
Best value $Steep, scruffy, densely pubbed
Explore hotels in Zizkov →
Holesovice
Repeat visitors $$Post-industrial halls in a river bend
Explore hotels in Holesovice →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Prague
Getting to & around Prague
Getting there
Fly into Vaclav Havel Airport west of the city, then a bus to the metro or a direct coach to the main station
Flight
Vaclav Havel Airport Prague (PRG)
About seventeen km west of the centre, with no rail link. City buses run to two metro stations on the green and yellow lines in fifteen to twenty minutes, an airport coach runs to the main railway station, and taxis or rideshare take half an hour outside the peaks.
Train
Praha hlavni nadrazi
Fast international services from Berlin and Dresden, Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest arrive at the art nouveau main station, five minutes' walk from Wenceslas Square
Coach
Florenc
Long-distance coaches from across central Europe use the terminal north-east of the centre, on two metro lines
Drive
Motorways from Germany, Austria and Poland converge on the ring road, but the historic centre is a low-emission and largely permit-only maze and parking is punishing
Getting around
Walking
The old town, Josefov, the bridge and Mala Strana are one continuous walk, though the castle side is steep and the cobbles are unforgiving
Free
Metro
Three lines crossing in the centre, fast, deep and frequent, and the quickest way out to Vinohrady, Holesovice and the coach station
TBC
Tram
A dense network that does the work the metro cannot, including the climb to the castle and a night service that runs when the metro has shut
TBC
Funicular
Runs up Petrin hill from Mala Strana on the same ticket as the trams
TBC
Ferry
Small passenger boats cross the Vltava at several points as part of the transit network, a shortcut and a free view in one
TBC
Taxi & rideshare
App-based rides are straightforward; flagging a cab in the tourist streets has a long and unhappy history of overcharging
TBC
Day trips from Prague
Kutna Hora
Full daySilver town & ossuary
A medieval silver town that once rivalled Prague for wealth, with a cathedral built by the miners' guilds and vaulted like a tent. In the suburb of Sedlec, a chapel is decorated with the bones of tens of thousands of people, arranged into a chandelier and a coat of arms.
Getting there
train | car | tour | bus
1 hr by train east
Terezin
Full dayGhetto & fortress
An 18th-century garrison town turned into a ghetto and transit camp, dressed up for a Red Cross inspection and filmed as propaganda while its inhabitants were sent on to Auschwitz. The barracks, the small fortress and the children's drawings are the memorial.
Getting there
bus | car | tour
1 hr by coach north-west
Karlstejn Castle
Half dayHilltop castle
Charles IV's Gothic stronghold above the Berounka valley, built to hold the imperial crown jewels, with a chapel whose walls are set with semi-precious stones and gilded panel portraits. The uphill walk from the station is short and lined with stalls.
Getting there
train | car | tour
40 min by train south-west
Bohemian Switzerland
Full daySandstone gorges
A national park of sandstone towers, ravines and pine on the German border, where the largest natural rock arch in Europe stands on a ridge above the Elbe and a punted boat carries you through a narrow gorge.
Getting there
train | bus | car | tour | walk
2 hr by train and bus north
Karlovy Vary
Full daySpa town
A 19th-century spa in a narrow wooded valley, with colonnades over hot mineral springs, a geyser that shoots several metres up in a hall, and a habit of drinking the water from a spouted porcelain cup as you walk.
Getting there
bus | car | train
2 hr by coach west
A little history of Prague
A castle stood on the ridge above the Vltava by the late 9th century, and the town below grew rich on the trade routes crossing Bohemia. Its great century was the 14th, when Charles IV made Prague the seat of the Holy Roman Empire and built to match: a university in 1348, a whole New Town laid out on a plan, the stone bridge, and the cathedral on the castle rock. A century later the city was the centre of the Hussite revolt, and its councillors were thrown from a window in the first of the defenestrations that punctuate Czech history.
A second defenestration in 1618 helped start the Thirty Years' War, and the Protestant defeat at the White Mountain in 1620 delivered Bohemia to the Habsburgs, who re-Catholicised it and rebuilt it in baroque. Prague became the capital of Czechoslovakia in 1918, was occupied in 1939, and lost almost all of its Jewish population in the Shoah while escaping the bombing that flattened other central European capitals. Reform in 1968 was ended by Warsaw Pact tanks; twenty-one years later crowds filled Wenceslas Square and jangled their keys, and the government fell in weeks.
The Premyslid dynasty founds a castle on the ridge above the river
Charles IV founds the university and lays out the New Town as imperial capital
Work begins on the stone bridge that becomes Karluv most
Defeat at the White Mountain brings Habsburg rule and the baroque city
Prague becomes the capital of independent Czechoslovakia
The Prague Spring is crushed by a Warsaw Pact invasion
The Velvet Revolution begins with mass gatherings on Wenceslas Square
Know before you go
Payment
Cards & cash mixed
English
Widely spoken
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / E
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+420
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
FAQs about Prague
▸ How many days do you need in Prague?
Three covers it properly: one for the Old Town, Josefov and the bridge, one for the castle, Mala Strana and Petrin, and one for whatever you actually care about, whether that is galleries, Vysehrad or a day trip. Four or five lets you add Kutna Hora or Terezin without rushing.
▸ How do you avoid the crowds in Prague?
By clock rather than by season. The bridge, the Old Town Square and the castle courtyards are close to empty before nine in the morning and again after dark, and the coach groups thin out in the evening. Staying central rather than commuting in is what makes that possible.
▸ Is Prague still cheap?
Cheaper than western Europe but no longer the bargain it was, and the centre charges centre prices. Step two or three streets off the tourist route and food and beer cost a fraction of what they do on the square; the outer districts are cheaper again.
▸ Is the Astronomical Clock worth waiting for?
The dial is worth studying at any time; the hourly procession lasts under a minute and draws a dense crowd. Look at the mechanism and the calendar face first, watch the show once if you happen to be there, and do not plan your day around it.
▸ Do you need to book Prague Castle in advance?
The grounds are open to walk through freely, and only the interiors need a ticket, bought at the visitor centres on the day. Queues at security build through the morning in the busy months, so arriving early matters more than booking ahead.
▸ Is Prague walkable?
Very, within the historic core, which is compact enough to cross in half an hour. The catch is the cobblestones and the climb to the castle; trams and the funicular handle the hills and are frequent enough that you rarely check a timetable.
More in Czechia
Brno
Moravia's capital: a Habsburg prison fortress, an ossuary second in Europe only to the Paris catacombs, and one of the buildings that invented modern architecture.
✓ best Apr-OctCesky Krumlov
A whole Renaissance town inside a river loop, under a castle with bears in the moat and one of the last working baroque theatres in Europe.
✓ best Apr-May, Jul-OctPilsen
The industrial city that invented golden lager, with the country's tallest spire on a vast medieval square and a US liberation story suppressed for forty years.
✓ best Apr-Sep