Prague is a city that has kept more of its past standing than almost anywhere in Europe. Not one district, but whole centuries stacked side by side — Romanesque cellars, Gothic spires, Renaissance halls, Baroque domes. This is the city where Holy Roman Emperors ruled from Prague Castle, where Charles IV founded Central Europe’s oldest university in 1348, and where the astronomical clock has been marking time since 1410. Meanwhile, the Jewish Quarter survived centuries of expulsions and rewrites to hold Europe’s oldest active synagogue. The historic centre has been UNESCO-listed since 1992.
Audio guide Prague
Tella is a free audio guide for any place on Earth. Here are 30 places in Prague worth a story. Open one on the map and hear it read aloud in English, or take the Android app on a walk and let it narrate whatever you pass.
About Prague
Places worth a story
Charles University
oldest and largest university in the Czech Republic
Charles Bridge
bridge in Prague, Czech Republic
The foundation stone for Charles Bridge was laid at precisely 5:31 a.m. on July 9, 1357. That odd timing wasn't an accident — Charles IV, a keen astrologer, believed the resulting palindrome of odd numbers (1-3-5-7-9-7-5-3-1) would give the bridge extra strength. It seems to have worked. The bridge survived the flood that destroyed its predecessor and remained the only crossing of the Vltava for nearly five hundred years. Some say eggs were mixed into the mortar to bind the stones, though modern tests suggest milk or wine was more likely.
Photo: A.Savin · FAL
St. Vitus Cathedral
Roman Catholic cathedral in Prague
National Library of the Czech Republic
central library of the Czech Republic
Dancing House
building in Prague, Czech Republic
Old Town Square
square in the Old Town quarter of Prague
The Old Town Hall's astronomical clock has been drawing a crowd every hour since 1410, but the square around it nearly became a very different place. In the 19th century, city planners proposed demolishing much of the Old Town and rebuilding it in a modern Parisian style, with wide boulevards cutting through. Only part of the plan ever happened; the square survived. The Týn Church’s twin spires, the baroque St. Nicholas Church, and a memorial to Jan Hus all face each other across the cobbles, while a meridian line in the pavement still recalls the square’s long history as a point of measurement in the city.
Photo: A.Savin · FAL
Church of Our Lady before Týn
church building in Old Town, Czech Republic
Its two towers don’t match, and that’s the first thing anyone notices about the Church of Our Lady before Týn. One is thicker, built to carry more weight, and together they rise eighty metres over the Old Town with eight little spires crowning each one. The church has overlooked Prague’s main square since the 14th century, and for a long stretch it was a Hussite stronghold. The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, whose observations laid groundwork for Kepler’s laws, is buried somewhere inside.
Photo: A.Savin · FAL
National Gallery Prague
art museum in Prague, Czechia
Žižkov Television Tower
TV tower in Prague, Czech Republic
Powder Tower
tower in Prague, Czech Republic
Prague's kings once passed through the Powder Tower on their coronation route, a Gothic gatehouse that marked the royal road into the Old Town. It got its current name in the 18th century when it was used to store gunpowder. The tower now houses a viewing gallery, its stone facade richly decorated with sculptures but also bearing the marks of battle damage from the Prussian siege of 1757.
Photo: Hans Peter Schaefer, http://www.reserv-a-rt.de · CC BY-SA 3.0
Clementinum
building complex in Prague, currently used as library
In 1781, a Jesuit astronomer here began a weather diary that has never missed a single day since — the Clementinum’s measurements are the oldest continuous records of their kind in the world. The complex itself was built by the Jesuits in the sixteenth century, and its Baroque library hall is one of the most beautiful rooms in Europe, with frescoes by Jan Hiebl and globes at its centre.
Photo: VitVit · CC BY-SA 4.0
St. Nicholas Church
church in Prague in Malá Strana neighborhood
During the Prague Uprising in May 1945, Czech resistance fighters hid a radio antenna inside the church's bell tower to broadcast calls for help to the approaching Allied forces. The church's massive green copper dome—seventy meters high—gave them the best transmission point in the city. Baroque architect Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer designed the interior so that light floods the pink marble and gold from hidden windows. The church took fifty years to finish because Prague's wealthiest families competed to fund each chapel, each one more elaborate than the last.
Stories are written by an AI from public map and encyclopaedia data and may contain mistakes.