Prague's Old Town: The City That Time Forgot

Prague is one of the few major European cities that escaped significant damage in World War II, and the result is a historic centre of extraordinary completeness — a UNESCO World Heritage Site of Gothic churches, baroque palaces, Art Nouveau apartment buildings, and medieval bridges that together form one of the finest urban landscapes in Europe. The city's architecture spans a thousand years, from the Romanesque rotundas of the 11th century to the cubist buildings of the early 20th century that are found nowhere else in the world.

The Charles Bridge, built between 1357 and 1402, is the finest medieval bridge in Europe — a 516-metre span of sandstone arches decorated with 30 baroque statues of saints, connecting the Old Town to the Lesser Town and the castle hill. The bridge is at its most atmospheric in the early morning, before the tourist crowds arrive, when the mist lies on the Vltava River and the castle is visible through the haze.

Prague Castle, on the hill above the Lesser Town, is the largest ancient castle complex in the world — a 70,000-square-metre complex of palaces, churches, gardens, and galleries that has been the seat of Bohemian kings, Holy Roman Emperors, and Czech presidents for over a thousand years. The St. Vitus Cathedral, begun in 1344 and completed in 1929, is the finest Gothic cathedral in Central Europe, and the view from its tower — over the red rooftops of the city and the Vltava River — is the finest in Prague.

The Old Town Square is the finest public space in Prague — a medieval square surrounded by Gothic, baroque, and Renaissance buildings, dominated by the Astronomical Clock (Orloj), which has been marking the hours since 1410 with a procession of apostles and allegorical figures. The square is at its most beautiful in the early morning and at Christmas, when the market fills it with stalls selling mulled wine, trdelník (a spiral pastry cooked over charcoal), and hand-painted ornaments.

The Jewish Quarter (Josefov) is one of the most important Jewish heritage sites in Europe — a neighbourhood of six synagogues, a town hall, and the Old Jewish Cemetery, where 12,000 gravestones are stacked on top of each other in layers up to 12 deep, a consequence of the limited space available for Jewish burials in the medieval city. The Pinkas Synagogue, whose walls are inscribed with the names of 77,297 Bohemian and Moravian Jews murdered in the Holocaust, is one of the most moving memorials in Europe.

The Czech beer culture is one of the finest in the world — the country has the highest per capita beer consumption in the world, and the Pilsner Urquell brewery in Plzeň (90 minutes from Prague) is the birthplace of the lager style that now accounts for 90% of the world's beer production. In Prague, the best beer is drunk in the traditional pivnice (beer halls) — U Fleků, which has been brewing its own dark lager since 1499, and the Lokál chain, which serves the finest Pilsner Urquell in the city.

The best time to visit Prague is in spring (April to June) or autumn (September to October), when the weather is mild and the city is at its most beautiful. The summer months (July and August) are the busiest — the city receives more than eight million tourists per year, and the Old Town Square and the Charles Bridge can feel genuinely overwhelmed. The Christmas markets (late November to December) are among the finest in Europe, and the city in winter — cold, quiet, and dusted with snow — has a beauty that the summer crowds obscure.