Vinohrady

What it is

The royal vineyards of Charles IV, built over in the late nineteenth century as the bourgeois quarter of the growing city — long straight streets of neo-Renaissance and Art Nouveau apartment houses, plane trees, and squares that behave like village greens. Today it is the neighbourhood Prague residents and long-term foreigners name first when asked where they would live, and the answer this site gives most often to the question of where a second-time visitor should stay.

What is here

Náměstí Míru, with the neo-Gothic twin-spired church of St Ludmila. Jiřího z Poděbrad square — locals say Jiřák — with Jože Plečnik's Church of the Sacred Heart of 1932, one of the great European churches of the twentieth century and unlike anything else in the city, plus a farmers' market that runs most of the week. Riegrovy sady, the sloping park whose lawn fills at sunset with people watching the Castle across the valley — with a classic beer garden behind it. Havlíčkovy sady, where a working vineyard survives on the slope and the Grébovka gazebo pours its wine. And Vinohradský pivovar, the neighbourhood's own revived brewery.

What it is like

Residential Prague at its most pleasant: cafés and bistros at a density the centre cannot match, dinner without a reservation battle, streets that are calm by eleven. The bar scene around Vinohradská and toward the border with Žižkov includes the core of Prague's gay nightlife. There are almost no sights in the guidebook sense, which is exactly why the people who fill the terraces are locals.

Practical

Metro line A stops three times here — Náměstí Míru, Jiřího z Poděbrad, Flora — and trams cover the rest; Wenceslas Square is about ten minutes away. Rooms and apartments cost less than the Old Town and give you noticeably more space, though the gap has been closing. The one trade-off is honest: you commute a few minutes to every sight, and you come home to a neighbourhood instead of a stage set.