An Introduction to Prague

UNESCO-listed Prague; 1,000 Years in the Heart of Europe

This 3-hour Prague walking tour introduces key monuments within this beautiful UNESCO-listed city. As we explore, your expert guide shares insight into Prague’s 1,000 years at the heart of European history.

We begin our guided tour in the Old Town Square, the ancient marketplace that established Prague as an important center for medieval trade. The soaring, late Gothic towers of Tyn Church and Old Town Hall triumphantly showcase the economic and cultural power which Prague achieved during its centuries of Bohemian self-rule. At the Square’s center, the monument to the religious reformer, Jan Hus, stands as the symbol of Czech national identity and resistance to foreign domination.

Walking through the winding streets of Old Town, you’ll see monuments and buildings that reveal the social and political complexities of Prague’s multicultural past. At Charles University’s oldest remaining structure, a lovely Gothic oriel window from 1370, you’ll discover the impact that Czech intellectuals have had on their nation’s political fortunes – a tradition that began with Charles IV, the French-educated Holy Roman Emperor who founded the university in 1348 to make his capital city a center of learning.

Wenceslas Square; from Nazi Rallies to the first Czechoslovak Republic

Wenceslas Square will frame our discussion of Prague’s twentieth-century ordeals. The Nazis held mass rallies here, which was also the point of convergence for the Warsaw Pact tanks that crushed the Prague Spring protests of 1968. Next, the greatest of the City’s many art nouveau masterpieces, Municipal House, sends us back to the twentieth century’s most optimistic moment for Czech independence. Built in 1911, Municipal House flamboyantly proclaimed that the Czechs were thoroughly modern people, ready to join Europe. It was from this hall that the post-WWI creation of the first Czechoslovak Republic was declared.

A Discussion on Jewish Integration in Prague

Finally, you’ll walk through the Jewish Quarter. You’ll see the oldest functioning temple in Europe, the Old-New Synagogue, and the rococo Jewish Town Hall. This will lead us to a discussion of the cultural and economic interactions of Prague’s venerable Jewish community with its German and Czech neighbors. Ending our Prague walking tour at the Vltava River, beneath a grand view of Prague Castle, we’ll conclude with a summary of the emerging Czech political system, more than 30 years into the country’s post-cold war revival as a modern democracy.