Prague

Staroměstské náměstí

Six centuries of Czech history in one paved rectangle — and the only place where Gothic, Baroque, Renaissance and Art Nouveau are all in the same photograph.

Pražský hrad (Prague Castle)

The largest ancient castle complex in the world, free to walk through, with a 450 Kč ticket that buys a thousand years of interiors — and a two-day validity nobody uses properly.

Václavské náměstí (Wenceslas Square)

The pavement where 1918, 1968 and 1989 physically happened — with the Soviet bullet repairs still visible on the museum facade and a cross in the ground where Jan Palach fell.

Žižkovská televizní věž

The highest view in the country, open until midnight — and ten giant bronze babies crawling up the outside of a tower the city used to hate.

Pražský orloj (Prague Astronomical Clock)

A 600-year-old machine that still models the heavens correctly — and a 45-second show that is worth watching precisely once, from the back.

Katedrála svatého Víta

585 years of construction in one building, Peter Parler's revolutionary vaulting, and a Mucha window that has no equal in any cathedral anywhere.

Kostel Nejsvětějšího Srdce Páně

Plečnik's 1932 brick ark with the largest clock face in Prague — the finest interwar building in the country, standing on a residential square almost nobody visits.

Pražský metronom

A giant metronome ticking on the plinth where a fifteen-metre Stalin was dynamited — the most compressed piece of 20th-century history anywhere in Prague, and free.

Strahovská knihovna (Strahov Monastery Library)

Two Baroque library halls still holding the collections they were built for, plus a monastic cabinet of curiosities with narwhal tusks — and the best free view over Prague from the terrace outside.

Karlův most (Charles Bridge)

Empty at sunrise it is one of the great walks in Europe; at 2pm it is a queue. The difference is entirely in the hour you choose.

Vyšehrad

Free, green and nearly empty, with the founding myth of the country attached and a rampart view that most Praguers will tell you beats the castle's.

Starý židovský hřbitov (Old Jewish Cemetery)

Twelve layers of burials in a plot that was never allowed to grow — the physical shape of four centuries of restriction, and unlike anything else in Europe.

Chrám svatého Mikuláše (St. Nicholas Church, Malá Strana)

The best Baroque interior in Central Europe, an organ Mozart played, and next door a bell tower where the secret police watched the embassies from the top floor.

Pinkasova synagoga (Pinkas Synagogue)

77,297 names written by hand on the walls, and upstairs the drawings the children of Terezín made before deportation. The most important room in Prague.

Španělská synagoga (Spanish Synagogue)

The most beautiful room in the Jewish Quarter by a distance, and the only one that tells you what happened to Czech Jews after emancipation rather than before.

Obecní dům (Municipal House)

The most complete Mucha interior in existence, the hall where Czechoslovakia was declared, and a ground-floor café you can walk into free.

Veletržní palác (Trade Fair Palace)

Van Gogh, Picasso, Klimt and Kupka's first pure abstractions in a 1928 Functionalist landmark — 250 Kč, and you will have most of it to yourself.

Národní památník na Vítkově

A Functionalist monument that held an embalmed Communist president, under one of the world's largest equestrian bronzes — with a free rooftop view over the whole city.

DOX Centre for Contemporary Art

A politically argumentative contemporary art centre in a converted factory, with a 42-metre wooden airship on the roof you can walk inside.

Armádní muzeum Žižkov

Free, newly rebuilt, 7,000 objects across four floors, and candid about Munich, 1948 and 1968 — the best museum-per-crown in Prague by an enormous margin.

Farmářské tržiště Náplavka

A hundred and fifty producer stalls along the river every Saturday morning, and the best breakfast in Prague eaten standing on a quay.

Petřín

The best free view in Prague from a hillside orchard, plus a miniature Eiffel Tower and a genuine 1891 mirror maze — but the funicular is out and it is now a real climb.

Letenské sady (Letná Park)

The best free view in Prague, a giant metronome standing where a fifteen-metre Stalin was dynamited, and the plateau where 800,000 people ended Communism.

Stavovské divadlo

Stavovské divadlo

Don Giovanni, in the room where Mozart conducted its premiere in 1787, for less than a decent dinner. There is no substitute experience anywhere.

Rudolfinum

Rudolfinum

One of Europe's great concert halls, the Czech Philharmonic's home, at prices that would be a joke in Vienna — plus a free contemporary art gallery nobody notices.

Naše maso

The best beef tartare and the best burger in Prague, eaten standing up in a butcher's shop for under 200 Kč, two minutes from Old Town Square.

Kuchyň

Kuchyň

No menu — you choose by lifting the lids on the stove — and a terrace looking over the whole city, right outside the castle gate. The best meal in Hradčany by a distance.

Kantýna

Butcher's prices, restaurant cooking: pick your cut off the counter, pay by weight, and eat the best steak and tartare in Prague for less than a mediocre dinner on the square.

Výčep

A Bib Gourmand for Wallachian pub cooking with everything made in house — and a Moravian lager on tap in a city that pours nothing but Pilsner.

Eska

The restaurant that invented modern Czech cooking — Bib Gourmand, wood-fired bread that is the best in the city, and a breakfast that costs what a hotel buffet costs.

The Eatery

A Michelin Bib Gourmand ten minutes from the centre, cooking from named producers at prices that recalibrate what a Prague restaurant should cost.

Café Savoy

A genuine 1893 grand café with the best ceiling in Prague — and, in a district that eats badly, the one place worth booking.

Café Louvre

Café Louvre

Einstein's café, Kafka's café, restored and still working — and priced like a café rather than a landmark. Come for breakfast.

Můj šálek kávy

The Doubleshot roastery's café — coffee served with tasting notes like wine, and a brunch locals rate as the city's best.

Lokál Dlouhááá

Tank-fresh unpasteurised Pilsner poured by people who take the pour seriously — order a hladinka, then a mlíko, and understand Czech beer in fifteen minutes.

U Hrocha

The last proper local pub within a hundred metres of the castle route — one beer, poured properly, at a price the district has no right to offer.

Hemingway Bar

Hemingway Bar

A World's 50 Best Bars room on a side street, and the only place in Prague to drink absinthe the way it is actually meant to be drunk.

Vinohradský pivovar

A neighbourhood brewery pouring its own unpasteurised lager at 65–80 Kč, with Czech pub food cooked properly and not a tour group in sight.

Riegrovy sady a pivní zahrádka

The best sunset view in Prague, from a grass slope with a beer that costs a third of what the centre charges.

U Vystřelenýho oka

The district's emblematic pub — cheap, loud, late, with a beer garden, sitting under Jan Žižka's statue and named after his missing eye.

Dva kohouti

Beer brewed in the room where you drink it, at neighbourhood prices, in a courtyard — and they want you to bring dinner in from the butcher down the street.

Letenský zámeček — pivní zahrádka (Letná Beer Garden)

Every bridge in Prague laid out below you, a half-litre for 70 Kč, and several hundred people all facing the same direction. Bring cash.

U Zlatého tygra

Hrabal's local, unchanged: tank Pilsner at 55–65 Kč, communal tables, and a pub culture that has flatly refused to adapt to you.

U Slovanské lípy

Eight rotating taps of Czech microbrewery beer chosen properly — the fastest way to understand that Czech beer is more than Pilsner Urquell.