Things to see and do Central Bohemia

This square is a real giant stage, supporting major historical events. Today it is the place of a permanent animation, a great meeting place for tourists, but also for students from neighbouring universities. The background consists of a juxtaposition of palaces, public buildings, churches, houses, which superimpose styles, colours and periods in great harmony. These houses bear pretty names: the Stone Lamb (No. 17, Renaissance portal), the Golden Unicorn (No. 20, Gothic portal), the White Unicorn (No. 15, Venetian gables), the Stone Bell (No. 13, Gothic) or the Goltz-Kinsky Palace, a Rococo palace where Kafka's father once owned a shop. If you approach the square from Melantrichova Street, you will find yourself facing the Town Hall, a complex of several houses built over the centuries.
Many notable facades follow one another on the south side. At number 16, the Storch house, named after its owner, a famous Prague publisher, presents paintings signed by Mikolas Ales. We will also focus on the Renaissance style of the facade of the U Kamenneho Beranka house (Au petit lamneau de pierre) at number 18. At number 24, the house U Zlatého Jednorozce (Golden Unicorn) has a baroque facade and a Gothic portal. The composer Bedrich Smetana founded his musical school there in 1848. At number 27, admire the baroque facade, decorated with a Virgin and Child. At the corner of the house U Zlatého Andela (At the golden corner), note the statue of Saint Florian, at the corner of the facade.
The Old Town Square contains some of Prague's most famous monuments: the astronomical clock, the town hall and the church of St. Nicholas. As you walk through it, you will see a long metal strip: it materializes the Prague meridian that allowed you to read the time in the Middle Ages.

Jan Hus Memorial. As for the immense sculpted ensemble, it is the Jan Hus Memorial, a reformer burned in 1415. It was built by Ladislav Šaloun between 1903 and 1915, the year of its inauguration and the 500th anniversary of Hus' death. The whole quickly became a symbol of opposition to Austria and of national awakening. It sits in the middle of the square and is the place where all meetings are held. On the base, it reads "Love others..." in Czech - and, further on, the slogan of the Velvet Revolution "Pravda vítězí" (the truth will win)

Construction of the Old Town Town Hall (Staroměstská radnice) was authorized in 1338 by Bohemian King John of Luxembourg. The inhabitants raised funds for its construction, but not enough to build a new building. So they bought an existing house, which was renovated and enlarged over the years with the acquisition of neighboring dwellings.

The first, Gothic, was purchased in 1338, and a tower with a chapel was later built next door. The second floor of the house has remained intact to this day, and is the room in which weddings are celebrated. The next is the Renaissance window with the inscription Praga caput regni (Praha, the head of the kingdom). The next two houses were purchased much later. In front of the Town Hall, Old Town Square is intimately entwined with Prague's history. It was here that the first "defenestration of Prague" took place (1419), and it was here that Klement Gottwald came to harangue the crowd during the "Prague coup" in 1948.

The tower of the Old Town Hall. It was built to symbolize and reinforce the political role of the complex. It rises to a height of 70 m. It's possible to climb up the tower and enjoy a marvellous view of the district. An inclined access ramp or an elevator can be used. The top is therefore easily accessible. At the foot of the tower, on the mosaic sidewalk, are twenty-seven crosses: a tribute to the twenty-seven nobles who refused Catholicism and, in 1618, defenestrated two guards and a secretary of the Habsburg sovereign, sounding the start of the Thirty Years' War. All were beheaded after the Battle of White Mountain.

In 1835, the municipality purchased the Maison au Coq (Rooster House) to the south of the building, linking it to the rest of the building. During a tour of the interior spaces, this house will catch your eye with its beautiful, perfectly preserved Romanesque reception room.

The "à la minute" house. Part of the ensemble of buildings that make up the Town Hall, the "minute house" (Dům U minuty) - so called because it housed a pharmacy accessible from all points of the Old Town in less than a minute - is remarkable for the sgraffito that covers its façade. They date back to the Renaissance and are one of the finest examples of this mural decoration technique. In 1896, it was the last of the buildings acquired to enlarge the town hall. The Kafka family lived here for seven years.

If you now return to the side of the Old TownSquare and take a close look at the façade, you'll notice that the construction lines seem to stop abruptly, as if part of the building were missing. This is due to the disappearance of the two wings to the north and east of the building, which were destroyed by fire during the Prague uprising at the end of the Second World War and never rebuilt. These successive additions on one side and amputations on the other explain the wobbly character and, in any case, the highly contrasting and totally atypical appearance of the Town Hall.

Go to the north-west corner of the Town Hall, where you'll find a small brasserie where it's said the Prague executioner used to hang out. In fact, he is depicted in a large pre-war painting on the restaurant's wall. In the background, you can also see the Town Hall in its original state, before the damage caused by the bombing. Visit at night, when the interior lighting enhances the mural: during the day, the groups of tourists gathered in front of the restaurant make it impossible to really linger.

Prague Astronomical Clock (Pražský Orloj). What grabs the public's attention (a crowd of curious onlookers, their eyes riveted to the screen of a video camera) at every hour is the Orloj, a 600-year-old astronomical clock whose original mechanism drives figures (the Twelve Apostles, Death, the Miser, the Vain Man, the Turk). These figures are recent, dating from 1948 and replacing those destroyed by the Nazis in 1945. The central dial uses three hands to indicate the position of the sun, moon and planets, as well as... the time.

To the left of the astronomical clock is the entrance portal to the tourist office. Dating from the late ^15th century, it has all the hallmarks of late Gothic, with abundant decorative carving. Likewise, both walls of the entrance hall feature sumptuous mosaics designed by Mikoláš Aleš and dating from just before the war.

A guided tour of theinterior of the Town Hall is well worth taking: it allows you to admire all the different architectural styles: Gothic, Romanesque, Renaissance... Note the magnificent staircase leading to the upper floors, the Renaissance portal on the third floor and the coffered ceiling in the Maison au Coq. The highlight of the visit is the immense Council Chamber, admirable for the quality and density of its decorations. The view over the Place de la Vieille Ville and the houses lining it is well worth a visit, but a word of advice: don't get too close to the windows..

From the village, you will quickly (but breathlessly!) reach the promontory occupied by the castle. After the drawbridge, you will have to wait, unless you have already booked, because all the visits are guided. The tour follows the four main parts that make up the castle and do not have the same duration nor the same theme, so compose it according to your interests or your time.

First, there is the suburb with the main entrance where many artists and craftsmen present their skills. There is of course a bit of a tourist side to it, and you won't find the bargains of the century here, but you will get a good overview of Czech craftsmanship. Next is the archbishop's palace, the courtyard with the cashier's office, from which a staircase leads down to an 80 m deep well that supplied the castle with water until 1923.

On the first floor of the royal palace there is a courtiers' hall, which shows the history of the castle, and other rooms with objects and works of Czech history. The well-documented exhibition will allow you to follow the main stages of the construction and renovation of the building. In particular, the overviews show that Charles IV really designed the castle as a vault to house the jewels, the royal crown and the most precious holy relics.

The last part of the castle is the wing of which the church of St. Mary is a part, decorated with murals, probably the work of Nicolas Wurmser, a Strasbourgeois, dating from approximately the middle of the 14th century. The church is linked by a narrow passage to the chapel of Saint Catherine, tiny and private; only Charles IV had the right to use it. He came here to meditate, and none of his wives were allowed to disturb him here. Its walls are decorated with precious stones. The big tower, which dominates the whole castle and whose walls are 6 m thick, is occupied by the luxurious chapel of the Holy Cross. It was here that the king decided to install the crown jewels and relics. In the past, the chapel housed 128 paintings on wood, by Master Theodorik, made between 1357 and 1365. This chapel had to be closed to the public because the walls set with precious stones were badly damaged. The jewels are now in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague and the paintings are part of the National Gallery.

The MuMo is a private museum of contemporary art at the foot of Prague Castle on Nerudova Street, created on the initiative of the DrAK Foundation. The museum was institutionalized under the patronage of the former president of the Republic Václav Havel (1936-2011), who saw in this initiative the beginning of a revival of the Czech art scene. The MuMo organizes three to four annual exhibitions - monographic, group or thematic - featuring local or foreign artists. In 2019 the MuMo celebrated its tenth anniversary.