Holešovice & Letná
A bend in the river north of the centre holding a slaughterhouse turned market, a factory turned art centre, a Functionalist palace full of Picassos, and the city's two biggest parks. Letná on the ridge has the beer garden with the best view in Prague; Holešovice below it is post-industrial, unfinished and the closest thing the city has to a contemporary art district.
Who it's for: Art people, without question — this is where the National Gallery's modern collection, the DOX contemporary centre and most of the city's independent galleries are. Anyone who wants big parks: Letná and Stromovka together are hundreds of hectares. Families, for the technical museum, the aquarium and the space. Drinkers who want the view. Anyone bored of Gothic.
Things to know
- Letná Beer Garden is CASH ONLY. There is an ATM on site with high commission — bring korunas. Beer runs roughly 40–50 Kč for 0.3l and 65–75 Kč for 0.5l, plus a 50 Kč refundable cup deposit.
- The Trade Fair Palace (Veletržní palác) is 250 Kč and holds Van Gogh, Picasso, Klimt, Schiele and Mucha's Slav Epic building — it is the best-value major museum in Prague and consistently the emptiest.
- Children under 16 get in free to all National Gallery exhibitions, and a 750 Kč ten-day pass covers every permanent exhibition across all its buildings.
- Hall 22 at the Prague Market — the big produce hall — was scheduled for technical refurbishment from January to March 2026, with traders temporarily relocated to neighbouring Hall 13. Signposting is in place; the food is still there.
- The Letná plateau is where 800,000 people gathered in November 1989. The metronome stands on the plinth built for a fifteen-metre Stalin, blown up in 1962.
- Stromovka is the largest park in Prague — a former royal hunting ground — and connects to Výstaviště and, over a footbridge, to the zoo and Troja on the far bank.
- The district is bigger than it looks on a map and the walk between Letná and the northern end of Holešovice is a real twenty-five minutes. Use trams 1, 6, 12, 17 and 25 rather than walking everything.
- Vnitroblock, the converted-factory café and shop complex that appears in every Holešovice guide, has been closed for renovation with no confirmed reopening date at the time of writing — check before making the trip.
- Nádraží Holešovice (metro line C) is the arrival station for many international trains and buses, so this is often the first Prague district visitors see — and it makes a poor first impression that the rest of the neighbourhood does not deserve.