Nové Město & Vyšehrad
The city's working centre rather than its museum piece. Charles IV's 14th-century 'New Town' is a grid of broad boulevards and enormous squares that reads as 19th- and 20th-century because that's when it was rebuilt — banks, arcades, cinemas, department stores, and the boulevard where the country's politics happened. South of it, the river bends past a Saturday market on the embankment and up to Vyšehrad, a fortress rock that most visitors never reach and locals will tell you beats the castle.
Who it's for: Anyone interested in the 20th century — this is where 1918, 1968 and 1989 physically happened, and the memorials are on the pavements you walk. Architecture people, for the Art Nouveau, Functionalist and Cubist layers stacked along Národní and Wenceslas Square. Eaters — the district's food is far better than the Old Town's for the same money. Walkers, for the riverside from Vyšehrad up to the National Theatre.
Things to know
- Vyšehrad grounds, ramparts and views are free and open around the clock. Only the casemates with Gorlice hall, the basilica and some exhibitions are ticketed — and the casemates are hourly guided tours only, 45 minutes, on the hour.
- Náplavka farmers' market runs every Saturday 08:00–14:00 along Rašínovo nábřeží and is the best market in the city. The rest of the week the embankment is bars and cafés built into the old ice-storage vaults (kobky) in the river wall.
- Wenceslas Square is a boulevard 750 metres long, not a square. The bottom end (Můstek) is shops and crowds; the top end has the National Museum, the Palach memorial and the history.
- The 1989 memorial is easy to miss: a set of bronze hands under the arcade at Národní 16, between Tesco and the Metro cinema. Czechs leave candles there every 17 November.
- Look for the paler patched stone on the National Museum's facade — those are the repairs to the 1968 Soviet bullet damage.
- This is where the good-value eating is. Kantýna, Alma, Café Imperial, U Kalendů and the Vyšehrad duck pubs are all here, and all cost less than a worse meal on Old Town Square.
- Lower Wenceslas Square is far calmer than its 1990s reputation but still has a late-night fringe of touts, strip-club promoters and drunks. Nothing dangerous; just tiresome after midnight.
- The passages (pasáže) are the district's hidden layer — covered arcades cutting between streets, full of cinemas, cafés and shops. Lucerna is the famous one and has David Černý's upside-down horse hanging in its atrium.
- There are two Mucha museums now. The Mucha Foundation museum at Savarin Palace on Na Příkopě opened in early 2025 and is the substantial one; the older, smaller Mucha Museum on Panská is a different institution.