10 of the best things to do in Prague in 2023
Prague is one of the prettiest, most romantic cities in Europe, with its higgledy-piggledy streets, spires and bridges, and an architectural back catalogue of Gothic, Renaissance, baroque and Art Nouveau buildings. It’s the city of Franz Kafka, and the mythical Golem. Yet the capital of the Czech Republic hasn’t been sitting still: alongside all the history you’ll also find fresh ideas and an evolving food and wine scene. You can doubtless find your own way to well-known landmarks such as the Astronomical Clock, Wenceslas Square and the Charles Bridge, covered in good-luck padlocks, but here are some other suggestions when searching for things to do in Prague.
Getty ImagesHop on (and off) the tram for a scenic tour
Ding ding! As a greener alternative to hop-on hop-off buses and to help reduce traffic, in 2021 Prague’s deputy mayor introduced the Tram 42 route, a hop-on-hop-off service that scoots around some of the city’s favourite streets and landmarks. The service uses vintage trams, so it’s a little like stepping on board the Orient-Express – there’s one dating from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a 1929 tram that retired in 1974, and the Fifties-era T1 tram, inspired by American streetcars (musical fans may wish to recreate the trolley-car scene from Meet Me in St Louis). Running in a loop every 40 minutes from Dlabacov to Dlabacov at weekends, Tram 42 takes you past Prague Castle and the Belvedere summer palace, down Mala Strana and past the National Theatre, across Wenceslas Square, and along the waterfront. It costs just 250Kr for the day (around £10), and you can pay with contactless or even crypto – the tourist information centres dotted across the city is the place to go for the latest timings and tickets.
Website: prague.eu
AlamyGo bar-hopping along the embankment
For years it seemed that central Prague was unchanging, a perennial fairytale land of Gothic and rococo and Renaissance architecture; but recently the city has unveiled some striking additions. For many years, the Vtlava quayside between Naplavka and Rasinovo was half-forgotten, used for storage and as a car park. Then architect Petr Janda and his Brainwork studio had a brainwave: to restore the circular vaults set in the embankment (once used to store ice) and create a new cultural hub, inviting in cafés, galleries and bars. The result is known as Prague Eyes, a row of tunnel-like spaces each fronted by a monocle-like glass window, wearing over two tonnes, which pivots open to allow entrance. It’s one of the city’s buzziest areas at night, with restaurant boats moored on the Vltava riverfront on one side and club sounds spiralling out from the bars that now occupy the concrete-lined vaults on the other.
Explore one of the hipster districts
Following a well-worn urban narrative, Prague has several leftfield neighbourhoods that more mainstream visitors will be blissfully unaware of, among them this former industrial quarter lying in a bend of the river across from the old town. Over the years Praha 7 has been reborn with street-food stalls, farmers’ markets, gallery spaces, offices for creatives and pop-up fashion stores, clustering around Prague Market, a vision of Art Nouveau design. Former factories and warehouses that were going to be demolished now provide atmospheric, raw-brick venues such as Vnitroblock – a former steam mill that now contains a cinema, cafés and a repurposed US school bus – and the DOX Center for contemporary arts, easily identifiable from the huge wooden airship moored outside, named Gulliver, which has a reading room inside. Go on a self-guided tour around the district and spot the various Art Nouveau and Cubist landmarks, from the docks and the Prague Bakery and Soda Water Company, painted red and white in battleship camouflage, to the Industrial Palace, built in 1891.
Address: Vnitroblock, Tusarova 791/31, 170 00 Praha 7-Holešovice, Czechia; DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Poupětova 1, 170 00 Praha 7-Holešovice, Czechia
Website: vnitroblock.cz; dox.cz
Getty ImagesClimb a tower and take the view
Prague is such a scenic city that its architects have thoughtfully built several towers over the centuries to provide good vantage points – useful for spotting approaching enemies and for proclaiming important announcements. They’re also handy for a quick work-out, as several steps are involved. The city has around 120 towers (not counting church towers), with highlights including the Old Town Bridge Tower (Gothic, great views over the Castle district), the Powder Gate Tower (186 spiral stairsteps) and the Novomlynská Water Tower (only six storeys high but you get an exhibition about famous fires in the city). My favourite, though, is Petrin Lookout Tower, which bears a striking resemblance to a famous Parisian eye-full and makes more of a day out, involving a (fun) funicular ride up Petrin Hill and a climb of 299 slightly wobbly wooden steps to the top. It’s much smaller than the Eiffel, but because of the hill the tower is of the same elevation. While you’re up here (take the 22 tram), a wander around the mirror maze and Stefanik Observatory is more or less obligatory – those of a poetic disposition may want to pay their respects to 19th-century bard Karel Hynek Macha, who was buried nearby.
Check out Prague’s design scene
Furniture design in the Czech Republic really bloomed with the Biedermeier era of the 19th century, when beautifully understated pieces were made from locally sourced wood, while 20th-century designers embraced the geometric abstracts of cubism and trans modernism. But Czech design has taken off in recent years, especially glassware and ceramics, with names to drop including Rony Plesl, who showed at the Venice Biennale in 2022, and Maxim Velcovsky, whose playful creations include porcelain vases cast from snow. You can pick up more affordable designs at shops and galleries around town, such as Deelive, near the National Theatre, while Cubista, in the House of the Black Madonna, sells originals and copies of Art Deco and cubist designs (while you’re here, stop at the Museum of Czech Cubism below). Modernista, meanwhile, is a ‘greatest hits’ of the past century of Czech design, from factory wooden building blocks and Artel’s ‘devil box’ toys to keep sweets in to modernist furniture such as the UP’s Recliner H70 in streamlined bentwood, and the Janak cubist chair. Also, see Debut Gallery and Designum.
Zdeněk Porcal - STUDIO FLUSSERGraze on street food at Prague’s new outdoor market
By all means, fill your boots with dumplings and pork knuckles at one of Prague’s many traditional restaurants, but for a snapshot of the city’s contemporary street food culture, head to the off-the-radar Andel district on the west bank of the Vltava and the Manifesto Market. A little like London’s POP Brixton, it’s a clever structure constructed from pastel-blue scaffolding, designed to be easily modified, and various reclaimed materials such as aluminium sheets, lighting and furniture from previous pop-up markets. Pick up a Proud craft ale from the bar and peruse the various menus – there are Ukrainian varenyky dumplings at Barva, empanadas at Dame Dos and Korean bibimbap at Babyryze, although our favourite is Taiko for its tonkotsu and ramen. It’s a good place to head if you’re vegan or veggie, and the little paddling pool in the centre makes it a smart place for a family pitstop.
Address: Manifesto Market Anděl, Ostrovského 34, 150 00 Praha 5-Anděl, Czechia
Website: manifestomarket.com
Getty ImagesTravel back to the 1970s at the new Retro Museum
If you long for an age when yellow-and-orange wallpaper swirled all around, with carpets to match, and everyone ate off Formica and plasticware, then you may want to take a few design notes from Prague’s new Retro Museum. Set on the top floor of the Kotva department store – itself a classic of brutalist architecture – it provides a time-warp glimpse of Czechoslovakia during the 1970s and 80s, the socialist period between the Prague Spring of 1969 and the Velvet Revolution two decades later when the Communist government dissolved. Replica apartment rooms, filled with furniture, toys, clothes and food packets from the time, alongside a mock-up classroom, show what everyday life was like, and there are exhibitions on camping, fashion, TV advertising and sport. In some ways it taps into a sense of Ostalgie, the nostalgia some people feel for the consumerism of Communist East Germany, as depicted in the film Goodbye Lenin; in others, it shows the sinister omnipresence of state censorship and surveillance. Pack your Dukla Prague away kit and dog-eared copy of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and walk on in.
Address: Retro Museum Prague, Náměstí Republiky 8, 110 00 Staré Město, Czechia
Website: retromuzeumpraha.cz
AlamyTake a deep dive into Prague’s beer culture
Czechia has a deserved reputation for its excellent beer – pilsner to be exact – which flows all around the city, from the pedal-powered beer buses that pass you in the street to the spas where you can sit in tubs of the stuff, glass at hand. But rather than seeing beer merely as something to be swilled, it’s important to recognise pilsner as a defining part of Czech culture, treated as seriously as the French take wine and with its own set of customs and rituals. The pub, or hospada, is the social hub where regular drinkers, known as stamgast, gather, flipping out an empty beer coaster when they need a refill (putting the coaster on top of your glass signifies you’ve had enough) – cries of “Na zdravi!” greet each round. Order a snyt, and you’ll receive a glass that’s two-thirds creamy foam; ask for a mlíko and it will be nearly all foam – almost a pudding beer. In Prague, beer and history are entwined, nowhere more so than the rococo Strahov Monastery Brewery atop Petrin Hill, which has been making beer since the 12th century and runs tours, and U Fleku, a Hogwarts-like brewery/bar in a series of medieval vaulted halls. For a contemporary drinking hole, head to DVA Kohouti in the Karlin district, where craft ales and classic brews are listed on a cinema-style billboard above dungaree-clad bartenders. Those wishing to continue on a hoppy pilgrimage should head out of Prague to Ceske Budejovice and the Budweiser Budvar brewery, for an in-depth tour of its beer-making traditions, ending up in the tasting room with the chance to pour your own foaming pint.
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Getty ImagesLay siege to the castle
It’s one of the most popular things to do in Prague, but if it’s your first time here then a trip to Prague Castle – a looming presence above the River Vltava – is a must. A sprawling UNESCO World Heritage site that mixes Gothic, baroque and Renaissance architecture, the Castle district comprises several buildings – it’s possible to walk around the grounds for free, but buying a ticket gets you entry into the St Vitus Cathedral, a wondrous twin-towered achievement that was begun in 1644 and only completed in 1929. You’ll find the tomb of St Wenceslas here, along with the crown jewels, numerous gurning gargoyles and kaleidoscopic stained-glass windows – look out for the one made by 19th-century Art Nouveau artist Alfons Mucha. Other Castle highlights include the Defenestration window, through which various unlucky people were thrown in the Middle Ages – the Defenestration of 1618 famously led to the truly awful Thirty Years War – and Golden Lane, a 16th-century street of miniature, brightly painted houses named after the alchemists who tried to turn base metal into gold and create the elusive Philosopher’s Stone, the elixir of life. Just think: if it had worked, they’d all still be living here.
Address: Prague Castle, Hradčany, 119 08 Prague 1, Czechia
Website: hrad.cz
Lukáš MasnerHit up some modern art
Back in the 1970s, every British student worth their salt would have a poster by Czech graphic artist Alfons Mucha on their wall, swirling romantic illustrations that encapsulated the Art Nouveau period. Very bohemian, you might say. Head to the new Kunsthalle Praha and – until 16 October 2023 – you can explore the freewheeling idea of alternative living in Bohemia: History of an Idea 1950-2000, which travels from post-war Paris and New York, through swinging London to Tehran and Beijing, with artists including Bill Brandt, John Deakin, Nan Goldin, Alice Neel and Joan Semmel. The museum opened in 2022 in a former electric station in the centre of Prague, and it’s worth visiting for its café terrace alone, which has brilliant views over Petrin Hill and Prague Castle. Kunsthalle isn’t the only modern-art cat in town – Trafo Gallery is set in a former slaughterhouse (art is a much better occupation, we think) while Kampa Museum, founded in 2003 by Meda Mladeks, occupies a series of 14th-century mills on the River Vltava and contains a wonderful collection of mainly Czech artists, including abstract pioneer Frantisek Kupka.