Interactive map of Prague

How to read Prague on a map

Prague looks like a maze on paper and resolves into something simple once you know three things.

The Vltava runs north through the city and bends around it. On the west bank the ground goes up almost immediately: Malá Strana at river level, then Hradčany and the Castle on the ridge above it, with Petřín hill to the south. On the east bank it is flat — the Old Town, Josefov and the much larger New Town spread out behind it. If you are climbing, you are on the Castle side.

The Old Town is a medieval street plan and does not run on a grid. The lanes curve, rejoin and change name, and the most reliable way to navigate is by landmark rather than by street: the Old Town Square in the middle, Charles Bridge to the west, the Powder Tower to the east, Wenceslas Square to the south. Everything in the historic core is inside a fifteen-minute walk of that square.

Beyond the core, the city is a ring of neighbourhoods. Vinohrady and Žižkov to the east, Karlín and Holešovice to the north, Smíchov across the river to the south-west, Vyšehrad on its own rock downstream. These are where people actually live, and where the food and beer get both better and cheaper.

Distances, which are shorter than they look

The centre is small. From the Old Town Square to Wenceslas Square is about ten minutes on foot; from the Old Town Square across Charles Bridge to the foot of the Castle is about twenty, and the climb up adds ten more.

What costs time here is not distance but gradient and cobbles. The tram network exists precisely for that: tram 22 lifts you to the Castle gates without the stairs, and the funicular does the same for Petřín — free with a 24- or 72-hour ticket, a separate fare otherwise.

What is genuinely far: Troja and the zoo in the north, the outer districts, and anything past the ring road. Those are journeys, not walks — see getting around.

Using the layers

Switching layers off is what makes this map useful rather than decorative. A city map with a thousand pins on it tells you nothing; the same map showing only the beer halls, or only the cocktail bars, answers an actual question.

The pattern that shows up fastest is what the tourist core does to the listings: attractions cluster tightly inside the Old Town and on the Castle ridge, while the restaurants and pubs worth the trip fan outwards into Vinohrady, Žižkov and Karlín. That gap between the two is the single most useful thing this map shows.