Prague tourist attractions

Prince Bořivoj founded the castle above the river in the 880s, and Prague City Tourism calls its 45 hectares the largest castle complex in the world. Bohemian kings, Holy Roman emperors and today the Czech president have all ruled from here, and the buildings trace almost every European style as each century added to them. Gothic St Vitus Cathedral rises at the centre, beside the Old Royal Palace, the houses of Golden Lane and the Romanesque St George's Basilica.

Style: Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque

Location: Hradčany, on the hill above Malá Strana

Access: A single ticket covers the historic interiors, St Vitus Cathedral, the Old Royal Palace, Golden Lane and St George's Basilica; the courtyards can be walked through without one. · Tickets and tours

Charles IV commissioned this stone crossing over the Vltava in 1357, and it was finished around 1402 under the master builder Peter Parler. Thirty Baroque statues line the balustrades, most raised between 1706 and 1714, from the bronze figure of St John of Nepomuk to groups added as late as the twentieth century. For four hundred years it was the only bridge linking the Old Town with the castle side, and it still carries a steady current of walkers, buskers and portrait artists between the two banks, while boats for river cruises on the Vltava leave from the piers beside it.

Architect: Peter Parler · Style: Gothic

Location: Across the Vltava, linking Staré Město and Malá Strana

Access: Free; an open pedestrian bridge at any hour.

The heart of Staré Město has been a marketplace since the tenth century and now gathers the city's finest facades around a wide cobbled space. The twin Gothic towers of the Church of Our Lady before Týn rise on one side, the Baroque St Nicholas Church on another, and the Art Nouveau monument to the reformer Jan Hus stands at the centre. Cafes and pastel houses fill the edges, and the Old Town Hall with its astronomical clock anchors the southwest corner, where crowds gather on the hour.

Location: Staré Město, between Charles Bridge and the Powder Tower

Access: Free; an open public square.

The clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadaň mounted the orloj on the Old Town Hall in 1410, and Hanuš of Růže refined it later that century, making it the oldest astronomical clock still working anywhere. Its blue and gold dial tracks the sun, moon and zodiac around a fixed earth, while a painted calendar wheel below marks the saints' days. Every hour from 8:00 to 23:00 the Walk of the Apostles turns above the crowd: two windows open, twelve figures pass, a skeleton tolls the bell and a golden cockerel crows to close the show.

Location: Old Town Hall, Old Town Square

Access: Watching the hourly show is free from the square; the Old Town Hall and its tower are ticketed. · Tickets and tours

Three generations of the Dientzenhofer family and their son-in-law Anselmo Lurago spent close to a century raising this church, consecrated in 1743, and it calls itself the most famous Baroque building in Prague. Its green copper dome and bell tower dominate the skyline of Malá Strana, the Lesser Town below the castle. Inside, a soaring nave carries a vast ceiling fresco of the life of St Nicholas above marble, gilding and statues that make the church a set piece of Central European Baroque.

Architect: The Dientzenhofer family and Anselmo Lurago · Style: Baroque

Location: Malostranské náměstí, Malá Strana

Access: Ticketed.

The museum opened in the summer of 2005 in the Herget Brickworks on the Malá Strana bank of the Vltava, a short walk from Charles Bridge. Its long-running exhibition sets out the world of the German-speaking Prague writer Franz Kafka, who lived from 1883 to 1924 and became one of the defining figures of twentieth-century literature. Original letters, diaries, photographs and first editions sit inside a deliberately dim, unsettling design of dark corridors, distorted models and audiovisual rooms meant to echo the anxiety and absurdity that run through his writing.

Location: Hergetova Cihelna, Cihelná 2b, Malá Strana

Access: Ticketed, open daily from 9:30 to 18:30.

The sculptor Jaroslav Róna unveiled this bronze in 2003 on Dušní Street in Josefov, beside the Spanish Synagogue. It draws its image from Kafka's early story Description of a Struggle: a small, sharply dressed Kafka rides on the shoulders of a huge empty suit that strides forward with no head or hands inside it. Rising well above head height, the figure has become one of the city's favourite modern landmarks and a fixed stop on any walk through the old Jewish Quarter, where Kafka spent nearly his whole life within a few streets.

Location: Dušní Street, Josefov, beside the Spanish Synagogue

Access: Free; an outdoor sculpture, visible at any hour.

A giant red metronome nearly 25 metres tall has swung over Letná Park since 1991, on the terrace where a colossal granite monument to Stalin once stood before it was demolished in 1962. The artist Vratislav Novák built it as a comment on time and political change, though the great arm is more often still than moving. The plinth below has become an open-air gathering place for skateboarders and one of the widest views in the city, looking across the Vltava and its bridges to the Old Town and its spires.

Location: Letná Park, above the Vltava on the north bank

Access: Free; an outdoor landmark in a public park.

Photo: "Prague Metronome" by Hynek Moravec (CC BY).

The tallest structure in Prague rises 216 metres over the Žižkov rooftops, a cluster of grey steel tubes built between 1985 and 1992 for television broadcasting. Ten giant faceless babies by the artist David Černý crawl up its columns, added in 2000 and now a fixed part of the outline. An observation deck 93 metres up gives a 360 degree view across the whole city, and the tower also holds a restaurant and a single one-room hotel suspended in one of its pods.

Location: Mahlerovy sady, Žižkov, east of the centre

Access: The observation deck is ticketed. · Tickets and tours

Josefov, tucked into the northern corner of the Old Town, was the walled home of Prague's Jewish community for centuries before most of it was cleared and rebuilt around 1900. What survives is remarkable: several historic synagogues, the Jewish Town Hall and the Old Jewish Cemetery, where thousands of worn headstones lean together in a small space. The Gothic Old-New Synagogue, from the late thirteenth century, is described as the oldest active synagogue in Europe, and legend places the clay Golem of Rabbi Loew in its attic.

Location: Josefov, northern Staré Město

Access: The Jewish Museum sites and the Old-New Synagogue are ticketed; the streets of Josefov are free to wander. · Tickets and tours