Photo: Prague grew up on both banks of the Vltava: the Old Town and the Jewish Quarter on the flat eastern side, the castle and the Lesser Town on the hill across the river, joined for more than six centuries by Charles Bridge. The old center came through the 20th century largely intact, so Gothic churches, baroque palaces, Art Nouveau cafés and Cubist houses stand a few streets apart. It is small enough to walk, the beer is excellent and the cooking is hearty.
This guide covers when to go, where to stay, what to see, a walk from Vyšehrad down to the Dancing House, a day in Kutná Hora, what to eat, and the history, music and customs that make the city make sense.
What Prague is good for
Friends' trips
Long tables in a beer hall, a paddle boat on the Vltava, a sunset beer in the Letná beer garden above the river, and a center small enough that nobody gets lost. Eating and drinking out costs less than in most Western European capitals.
Bachelorette and bachelor weekends
Prague has long been a stag and hen favorite, and the city now pushes back: organized pub crawls are banned in the center between 10pm and 6am. Book a brewery tour, a table in a beer hall or a boat on the river, then a jazz cellar or a late club, and keep the noise down in residential streets.
Weddings and honeymoons
Visitors can marry in a civil ceremony at the Old Town Hall, with their documents apostilled and translated into Czech, and castles and chateaux around Prague host weddings too. For a honeymoon, pair concerts and river views in the city with a night in Český Krumlov.
Couples
Charles Bridge at dawn before the crowds, the rose garden on Petřín, a concert in a baroque church and dinner in Malá Strana. On 1 May, Czech couples kiss under blossoming trees, above all on Petřín.
Families
The Petřín funicular and its mirror maze, the Astronomical Clock striking the hour, puppet shows, paddle boats on the river and Prague Zoo on the riverbank at Troja.
Solo travel
Compact, safe by big-city standards and easy to get around, with pubs where sharing a table with strangers is normal. A walking tour or a brewery tour is an easy way to meet people.
Food lovers
Svíčková and roast pork with dumplings, open sandwiches from a deli counter, fruit dumplings as a main course, and unpasteurized tank beer poured with a thick head.
History and art
A castle founded in the 9th century, the synagogues of the Jewish Quarter, Gothic, baroque and Cubist buildings side by side, and the squares where the events of 1968 and 1989 played out.
Plan your trip
When to go
May and June, September and October bring mild days and long evenings. July and August are warm and busy, with the biggest crowds on Charles Bridge. Winter is cold and gray, often around freezing, but December has Christmas markets on Old Town Square, and January to March are the quietest and cheapest months.
How long to stay
Three days covers the castle and Malá Strana, the Old Town and the Jewish Quarter, and a slower day on Petřín or at Vyšehrad. Four days adds a day trip to Kutná Hora or Karlštejn. With five, add Český Krumlov, about three hours south.
Getting there
Václav Havel Airport (PRG) is about 15 kilometers west of the center. Trolleybus 59 runs from both terminals to Nádraží Veleslavín on metro line A in about 17 minutes; the Airport Express bus goes to the main station, Praha hlavní nádraží, and needs its own ticket; a taxi takes 25 to 40 minutes. Direct trains reach the main station from Berlin, Vienna and Budapest.
Getting around
Walk: the center is compact, though the climb to the castle is steep. Trams go almost everywhere, with night lines after midnight, and three metro lines cross the center. One ticket covers trams, metro, buses and the river ferries: buy it in the PID Lítačka app, at a machine, or by contactless card at the terminal inside the tram, and validate a paper ticket as you board. Day passes also cover the Petřín funicular.
Tickets
The castle grounds are free and open from 6am to 10pm; the main circuit ticket covers St. Vitus Cathedral, the Old Royal Palace, St. George’s Basilica and Golden Lane, and is valid for two days. The Jewish Museum sells one ticket for its synagogues and the Old Jewish Cemetery, valid for three consecutive opening days. Book the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutná Hora ahead.
Money and tipping
The currency is the Czech koruna (crown); some tourist places take euros, at poor rates, with change in crowns. Cards work almost everywhere. In restaurants, tell the server the total you want to pay, about 10 percent over the bill, rather than leaving coins on the table. Use bank cash machines, pay in crowns when a card machine offers to convert, and expect a small city tax per person per night at hotels.
Weather, month by month
Spring
March to May
Chilly in March, mild by May, with blossom on Petřín and in the city’s orchards. April can swing from sun to sleet in a day.
Summer
June to August
Warm, around 24°C by day, with heat waves above 30°C in some years and sudden thunderstorms. Long evenings by the river and in the beer gardens.
Autumn
September to November
September is often warm and settled, October golden and cooler, and November gray and damp.
Winter
December to February
Cold, often around freezing, with short days and some snow. Christmas markets in December, the emptiest streets in January.
Top sights
01Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral
Founded in the late 9th century and still the seat of the head of state, the castle is a walled town of courtyards, palaces and churches above Malá Strana. St. Vitus Cathedral, begun in 1344 and finished only in 1929, holds the tombs of Bohemian kings, the St. Wenceslas Chapel with its walls of semi-precious stones, and a stained-glass window by Alfons Mucha. The Old Royal Palace and the tiny houses of Golden Lane are on the same ticket.
The grounds are free from 6am to 10pm: come early or late. The cathedral opens to visitors only at noon on Sundays, and the guard changes with a fanfare at noon every day.
Photo: Alvesgaspar, CC BY-SA 4.0
02Charles Bridge
Begun in 1357 for Charles IV and finished in the early 1400s, the stone bridge crosses the Vltava on 16 arches between Gothic towers. Most of its 30 statues were added between 1683 and 1714, starting with St. John of Nepomuk, who was thrown from the bridge in 1393; rubbing the bronze reliefs below him is said to bring you back to Prague. The statues you see are copies, the originals kept in museums.
Cross at dawn or late at night. Climb the Old Town Bridge Tower for the view along the bridge to the castle.
Photo: Jakub Hałun, CC BY-SA 4.0
03Old Town Square and the Astronomical Clock
The Old Town’s marketplace since the Middle Ages, with the twin spires of the Týn Church on one side, the Old Town Hall on the other and Jan Hus in bronze in the middle. The hall’s astronomical clock was first set going in 1410, and every hour from 9am to 11pm the apostles file past its little windows while Death rings his bell.
Take the lift up the Old Town Hall tower for the view down onto the square. For the clock, arrive a few minutes early.
Photo: Godot13, CC BY-SA 4.0
04The Jewish Quarter
Josefov was Prague’s Jewish Town for centuries. The Old-New Synagogue, finished around 1270, is the oldest active synagogue in Europe. In the Old Jewish Cemetery, in use until 1787, some 12,000 gravestones lean together under the trees, among them that of Rabbi Judah Loew, of the Golem legend, and the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue carry the names of nearly 80,000 Jews from Bohemia and Moravia killed in the Holocaust.
One Jewish Town ticket covers the synagogues and the cemetery for three consecutive opening days. Closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays.
Photo: Uoaei1, CC BY-SA 4.0
05Malá Strana and St. Nicholas Church
The Lesser Town below the castle is baroque Prague at its most complete: palaces, walled gardens and houses named for the signs over their doors. At its heart, St. Nicholas Church, built by the Dientzenhofers from 1704 to 1755, has a green dome, a painted ceiling and an organ that Mozart played in 1787.
Walk up Nerudova street toward the castle and look for the house signs: three fiddles, two suns, a golden key.
Photo: Björn S..., CC BY-SA 2.0
06Petřín Hill
The green hill above Malá Strana, with orchards, a rose garden, a mirror maze and a lookout tower built for the Jubilee Exhibition of 1891 and modeled on the Eiffel Tower. Climb its 299 steps for a view over the whole city. The Hunger Wall, which Charles IV had built in the 1360s, climbs the slope beside it.
The funicular from Újezd reopened on 22 September 2026 after a two-year renovation, with new cars. Day passes cover it; otherwise it has its own single ticket. Walk down through the orchards.
Photo: Suisant7, CC BY-SA 4.0
07The Strahov Monastery Library
The Premonstratensian monastery founded in 1143 on the hill above the castle keeps one of the best-preserved historic libraries in Europe: the baroque Theological Hall of the 1670s and the two-story Philosophical Hall of 1794, lined with carved shelves under painted ceilings.
The halls are seen from their doorways, to protect the books. Open every day; the monastery brewery next door serves its own beer.
Photo: Jorge Royan, CC BY-SA 3.0
08Wenceslas Square and the National Museum
More a boulevard than a square, laid out as the horse market of Charles IV’s New Town, it has been the stage for the city’s biggest moments: crowds in 1918, Soviet tanks in 1968 and the demonstrations of November 1989 that ended communist rule. The National Museum closes the top end, reopened in 2018 after seven years of renovation.
Climb to the museum’s dome for this view down the square. Below the museum, a bronze cross set in the pavement marks where the student Jan Palach set himself on fire in protest in January 1969.
Photo: Szombat78, CC0
Three hidden gems
From Vyšehrad down to the Dancing House
Prague’s other castle rock, the cemetery of its composers and writers, Cubist houses below the walls and the riverside market, ending at the city’s best-known modern building.
Take metro line C to Vyšehrad and walk west through the old gates to the rock above the river. Legend makes it the seat of the first Czech princes and of Princess Libuše, who foresaw a great city on the hills downstream. Inside the walls stands the Rotunda of St. Martin, a round Romanesque chapel from the 11th century and one of the oldest buildings in Prague.
The twin spires of the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul, rebuilt in neo-Gothic style in the 1880s, rise over Vyšehrad Cemetery, which became the national cemetery in 1869. Dvořák and Smetana lie here, with Alfons Mucha, Karel Čapek and Jan Neruda, and in the arcaded Slavín, built from 1889 to 1893, more than fifty artists and scientists share a single tomb.
Walk the ramparts for the view down the Vltava to the castle, and look into the Gorlice hall in the old casemates, where six of the original baroque statues from Charles Bridge are kept and shown on guided tours. Then take the steps down the slope toward the river.
Below the rock, on Libušina street and the embankment, stand the Cubist houses Josef Chochol built just before the First World War: the Kovařovic villa of 1912 to 1913, down to its garden railings, and the triple house on Rašínovo nábřeží, finished in 1914. Cubist architecture was a Czech speciality, and these are among its best examples.
Follow the river north along the Náplavka, the embankment where boat bars moor and a farmers’ market sets up on Saturday mornings. The walk ends at the Dancing House, built from 1992 to 1996 by Vlado Milunić and Frank Gehry on a corner left empty since a bombing raid in February 1945. Its glass tower leans against the solid one beside it like a couple in a waltz, which is why it is also called Ginger and Fred, and a glass-walled bar near the top looks out over the river.
Where to stay
Pick the neighborhood first, then the hotel. Each link opens a map of places to stay around it.
Staré Město
First visitThe Old Town: Old Town Square, the Jewish Quarter and the lanes down to Charles Bridge. Everything is walkable and the evenings are lively; rooms cost more and the main routes are crowded by day.
See hotels in Staré MěstoMalá Strana
CouplesThe Lesser Town, below the castle across the bridge: baroque palaces, walled gardens and cobbled lanes, calm and lovely at night. Expect hills, higher prices and trams along the river.
See hotels in Malá StranaNové Město
Short stays and transportThe New Town, founded in 1348: Wenceslas Square, the National Theatre and the main station. Well connected, with hotels at every price; the lower end of Wenceslas Square is loud late at night.
See hotels in Nové MěstoVinohrady
Food and local lifeLeafy streets of Art Nouveau apartment houses behind the National Museum, with cafés, wine bars, parks and some of the best restaurants in town. Ten to fifteen minutes from the center by tram or metro.
See hotels in VinohradyŽižkov
Budget and pubsA hilly old working-class district below the TV tower, known for its many pubs and lower prices. Lively and a little rough at the edges, a short tram ride from the center.
See hotels in ŽižkovKarlín
Cafés and quiet nightsA flat grid of 19th-century streets northeast of the center, renovated after the flood of 2002, with cafés, bakeries and new restaurants. Calm at night and two metro stops from the Old Town.
See hotels in KarlínThe 10 best budget hotels
Well-reviewed hotels at the lower end of Prague’s prices, best-reviewed first. On a weeknight in November 2026 they cost about €55 to €75 for two; prices change daily, so check your own dates.
01
02Áurea Legends by Eurostars Hotel Company
9.43,813 reviewsNové Město
11 min walk to Old Town Square
See prices
03
04
05Grand Hotel International - Czech Leading Hotels
9.217,472 reviewsDejvice
2.1 km from Prague Castle
See prices
06Plaza Boutique Hotel - Czech Leading Hotels
9.213,567 reviewsHolešovice
2.9 km from the main station
See prices
07
08
09Don Giovanni Hotel Prague - Great Hotels of The World
9.120,000 reviewsŽižkov
2.9 km from the main station
See prices
10Metropolitan Old Town Hotel - Czech Leading Hotels
9.112,894 reviewsStaré Město
9 min walk to Old Town Square
See prices
Hotel links go to Stay22. If you book, we may earn a commission, at no cost to you.
Food and drink
Czech cooking is made for cold winters: roast meats, rich sauces, dumplings and sauerkraut, with a soup to start. Lunch is the main meal for many Czechs, and on weekdays pubs and restaurants serve a cheaper daily menu, the denní menu, at midday.
Svíčková na smetaně
Beef sirloin braised with root vegetables and served in a cream sauce made from them, with bread dumplings, cranberries, whipped cream and a slice of lemon. The classic festive lunch.
Photo: Patrick-Emil Zörner (Paddy), CC BY-SA 2.0
Vepřo knedlo zelo
Pork, dumplings, cabbage: roast pork with bread dumplings and sauerkraut, the national dish in three words.
Photo: Ray Swi-hymn from Sijhih-Taipei, Taiwan, CC BY-SA 2.0
Guláš
Beef stewed with onions and paprika, thicker than a Hungarian goulash and served with dumplings. Order a beer with it.
Photo: Dezidor, CC BY 3.0
Smažený sýr
A thick slice of cheese, breaded and fried, with tartar sauce and potatoes or fries. Every pub has it.
Photo: Oldsoft, CC0
Chlebíčky
Open sandwiches on slices of baguette with potato salad, ham, egg, pickles and cheese, bought by the piece at a deli counter for breakfast or a quick lunch.
Photo: Pohled 111, CC BY-SA 4.0
Česnečka
Garlic soup with potatoes, caraway and fried bread, sometimes with cheese melted in: the classic cure after a long night.
Photo: Dezidor, CC BY 3.0
Ovocné knedlíky
Dumplings filled with plums, apricots or strawberries, topped with quark, sugar and melted butter, and eaten as a main course.
Photo: VitVit, CC BY-SA 4.0
Koláče
Round yeast pastries filled with poppy seed, plum jam or sweet quark, from bakeries and home kitchens.
Photo: VictoriaRomarniuc, CC BY-SA 4.0Eat in a pub, a hospoda, for the Czech classics and the lunch menu, in Vinohrady and Karlín for newer restaurants, and at a deli counter for chlebíčky. On Saturday mornings a farmers’ market fills the Náplavka embankment. The trdelník, the sugared pastry sold all over the Old Town, is a recent import, not an old Prague recipe.
Out of the window
Twice in two centuries, a quarrel in Prague over faith and power ended with men thrown from a high window, and twice a long war followed. The places are still there to find.
The story begins with a preacher. From 1402 Jan Hus preached in Czech at the Bethlehem Chapel in the Old Town, attacking the wealth and the abuses of the church, and crowds came to hear him. Summoned to the Church council at Constance with a safe conduct from King Sigismund, he was tried for heresy and burned at the stake on 6 July 1415. In Bohemia he became a martyr, and his followers, the Hussites, a movement.
Four years later, on 30 July 1419, a Hussite procession led by the priest Jan Želivský marched to the New Town Hall on Charles Square to demand the release of prisoners. A stone is said to have been thrown at them from a window. The crowd stormed the hall and threw the judge, the burgomaster and several councillors out of the windows to their deaths. King Wenceslas IV died a few weeks later, and the Hussite Wars that followed lasted some fifteen years.
Two centuries on, most of Bohemia was Protestant and its kings were Catholic Habsburgs. Rudolf II had granted freedom of worship in his Letter of Majesty of 1609, and the Protestant estates accused the officials of his successors of breaking it. On 23 May 1618 a group of Protestant nobles led by Count Jindřich Matyáš Thurn climbed to the Bohemian Chancellery in Prague Castle, declared the two royal governors, Vilém Slavata and Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice, guilty, and threw them out of the window, followed by their secretary, Philipp Fabricius.
All three survived a fall of some twenty meters from a third-floor window. Catholic writers saw the hand of angels or of the Virgin Mary; a later Protestant story had them land on a dung heap. The emperor ennobled Fabricius with the title von Hohenfall, “of the high fall”. The Bohemian estates chose their own king, Frederick of the Palatinate, and the revolt became the opening of the Thirty Years’ War.
Two quarrels over faith, two high windows, and two wars that spread far beyond Bohemia.
It ended badly for the rebels. Their army was routed at the Battle of White Mountain, just west of Prague, on 8 November 1620, and on 21 June 1621 twenty-seven of their leaders, three lords, seven knights and seventeen burghers, were executed on Old Town Square. Twelve of their heads were hung in iron baskets from the Old Town Bridge Tower and left there for ten years. Bohemia was returned to Catholicism, thousands of Protestant families left the country, and the baroque churches that crowd Prague today rose in the decades that followed.
The places are still there. Twenty-seven crosses are set into the cobbles of Old Town Square beside the Old Town Hall. The New Town Hall stands on Charles Square, and its Gothic tower is open to climb for most of the year. At the castle, the Old Royal Palace, on the main circuit ticket, takes you into the rooms of the chancellery and to the window of 1618.
Art
Gothic Prague
Under Charles IV, Prague was one of the great centers of Gothic art. Peter Parler’s workshop carved the portrait busts in the upper gallery of St. Vitus, and the National Gallery shows the panel paintings of the period, among them the Master of the Třeboň Altarpiece, in the Convent of St. Agnes.
Rudolf’s cabinet of wonders
Emperor Rudolf II filled the castle with paintings, instruments and curiosities, and kept Arcimboldo, Bartholomeus Spranger and Hans von Aachen at court. Swedish troops carried off much of the collection in 1648, and his portrait as Vertumnus, god of the seasons, has hung in Sweden ever since.
Mucha
Alfons Mucha’s posters made his name in Paris; at home he decorated the Lord Mayor’s Hall in the Municipal House and designed a window for St. Vitus. The Mucha Museum reopened in the Savarin Palace on Na Příkopě in January 2025, and his Slav Epic, twenty huge canvases, is on loan to the chateau at Moravský Krumlov in South Moravia until 2031.
Czech Cubism
Between about 1911 and 1914, Prague architects built in Cubist forms, all sharp angles and faceted facades: the House of the Black Madonna by Josef Gočár, with the Grand Café Orient upstairs, the houses below Vyšehrad and even a Cubist lamp post on Jungmann Square.
Modern Prague
The National Gallery’s modern collection fills the Trade Fair Palace, a functionalist exhibition hall of 1928 in Holešovice, and DOX nearby shows contemporary art. On Kampa Island, Museum Kampa collects Central European modern art, with František Kupka at its heart.
Two languages, one city
Until the Second World War, Prague wrote in two languages. German gave it Kafka and Rilke; Czech gave it Neruda’s Lesser Town and the good soldier Švejk.
Franz Kafka
1883 to 1924
Born beside Old Town Square, Kafka spent nearly all his life in Prague, writing at night after his day job at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute. He wrote The Metamorphosis in the family flat in 1912, and in the winter of 1916 to 1917 he worked on the stories of A Country Doctor in the tiny house his sister Ottla rented on Golden Lane, No. 22. He asked his friend Max Brod to burn his manuscripts; Brod published them instead. Kafka is buried in the New Jewish Cemetery in Žižkov.
Jan Neruda
1834 to 1891
Neruda grew up in the house At the Two Suns on the street now named after him, and his Tales of the Little Quarter (1877) are portraits of its neighbors, shopkeepers and beggars. A journalist for most of his life, he was a master of the feuilleton, the short newspaper essay. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda is said to have taken his pen name in his honor.
Jaroslav Hašek
1883 to 1923
The Good Soldier Švejk (1921 to 1923) opens in Prague with Švejk’s charwoman bringing him the news from Sarajevo, and much of its first part plays out in the city’s streets and pubs, above all U Kalicha, the Chalice, on Na Bojišti. Hašek died in 1923 with the novel unfinished.
Rainer Maria Rilke
1875 to 1926
Born in Prague and raised in its German-speaking world, Rilke wrote his early book of Prague poems, Larenopfer (1895), on the Lesser Town, the castle and St. Vitus, then left for Munich in 1896 and never lived in the city again. In the poem below he looks out over all of Prague at dusk to the green dome of St. Nicholas.
Im alten Hause; vor mir frei
seh ich ganz Prag in weiter Runde;
tief unten geht die Dämmerstunde
mit lautlos leisem Schritt vorbei.
Die Stadt verschwimmt wie hinter Glas.
Nur hoch, wie ein behelmter Hüne,
ragt klar vor mir die grünspangrüne
Turmkuppel von Sankt Nikolas.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Im alten Hause, from Larenopfer (1895)
Culture
Christmas
From late November, markets fill Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square with mulled wine, sausages and a tall tree. In the days before Christmas, carp are sold live from tubs in the street for the traditional Christmas Eve dinner of fried carp and potato salad.
Witches and blossom
On the night of 30 April, bonfires burn witch effigies across the country. The next day, couples kiss under blossoming trees, especially around the statue of the Romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha on Petřín.
Puppets
Czech and Slovak puppetry is on UNESCO’s list of intangible heritage, and marionette theaters in the Old Town play opera with puppets. Black light theater, performed in darkness under ultraviolet light, is another Prague speciality.
Prague on film
Miloš Forman shot Amadeus in Prague, filming the opera scenes in the Estates Theatre, where Mozart conducted the premiere of Don Giovanni. The Barrandov studios, founded in 1931, and the city’s streets have stood in for Vienna, Paris and London in many films since.
Hockey and football
Ice hockey is the national sport, and the rivalry between the football clubs Sparta and Slavia divides the city.
Music and nights out
Smetana and Dvořák
Smetana’s cycle Má vlast, with its river portrait Vltava, opens the Prague Spring festival every 12 May, the anniversary of his death. Both composers are buried at Vyšehrad.
Mozart’s Prague
Don Giovanni had its premiere at the Estates Theatre on 29 October 1787, with Mozart conducting, and the theater still stages it.
Concerts
The Czech Philharmonic plays in the Rudolfinum’s Dvořák Hall, the National Theatre and the State Opera stage opera and ballet, and churches all over the Old Town hold chamber concerts most evenings.
Jazz
Reduta on Národní street has been a jazz club since the late 1950s. In 1994 Bill Clinton played the saxophone there, a gift from Václav Havel.
Nights out
Start in a pub or a beer garden, then the bars of Vinohrady and Žižkov, and for late nights the clubs of the Old Town and Holešovice.
Nature and day trips
Petřín
Orchards, a rose garden and paths down to Malá Strana. Ride the funicular up and walk down.
Letná
The park on the plateau above the river, with a beer garden looking across at the Old Town’s bridges and a giant metronome where a statue of Stalin once stood.
Stromovka
A former royal game park below Letná, with ponds, meadows and a path on across the river to Troja, its chateau and the zoo.
The river
Rent a paddle boat from Slavonic Island in summer, or walk the Náplavka embankment, lined with boat bars and busy on Saturday mornings with the farmers’ market.
Divoká Šárka
A wild valley of rocks and woods on the western edge of the city, with an open-air swimming pool in summer, at the end of a tram line.
Day trips
Karlštejn, the castle Charles IV built to keep the crown jewels, is under an hour by train; Kutná Hora about an hour; the sandstone gorges and rock arch of Bohemian Switzerland National Park about two hours north, where some trails stay closed after forest fires: check before you go.
A day in Kutná Hora
An hour east of Prague by train, the silver town that was once the second city of Bohemia: a soaring Gothic church, the royal mint and a chapel decorated with human bones. Book the ossuary ahead.
People and customs
Greetings
Say dobrý den (good day) when you walk into a shop or a small restaurant, and na shledanou when you leave. Děkuji is thank you.
Sharing a table
In a busy pub it is normal to join strangers: ask je tu volno? (is this free?). The waiter keeps a tally of your beers on a slip of paper on the table.
Beer manners
In a traditional pub the next beer may arrive as your glass empties; say ne, děkuji (no, thank you) when you have had enough. Toast with na zdraví, looking each person in the eye, and do not cross arms with another pair clinking glasses.
Name days
Every day of the Czech calendar belongs to a first name, and people celebrate their name day almost like a birthday.
Shoes off
Czechs take their shoes off at home, and hosts often have slippers ready.
Quiet nights
Night quiet runs from 10pm to 6am, and in the residential streets of the center the city police enforce it.
Questions
How many days do you need in Prague?
Three days covers the castle and Malá Strana, the Old Town and the Jewish Quarter, and a slower day on Petřín or at Vyšehrad. Four days adds a day trip to Kutná Hora or Karlštejn.
Where should I stay in Prague on a first visit?
The Old Town or Malá Strana to walk everywhere, or Nové Město for transport links and more choice at every price. Vinohrady and Karlín are calmer and more local, 10 to 15 minutes from the center by tram or metro.
When is the best time to visit Prague?
May, June, September and October, when days are mild and the crowds thinner than in July and August. December has the Christmas markets; January to March are cold, quiet and cheapest.
How do I get from Prague Airport to the city center?
Take trolleybus 59 to Nádraží Veleslavín and metro line A into the center, or the Airport Express bus to the main station. A taxi takes 25 to 40 minutes.
Can I pay in euros in Prague?
The Czech Republic uses the koruna (crown), not the euro. Some tourist places accept euros at poor rates and give change in crowns, and cards are accepted almost everywhere.
Is Prague good for a bachelor party or a group trip?
Yes, with one rule to know: organized pub crawls are banned in the center between 10pm and 6am. Beer halls, brewery tours, river boats and late clubs make a better night, and the city is compact and good value.
Plan Prague with your group
Everyone swipes on the sights they want. SwipeSights builds the days around the picks, in walking order.
