The city
Prague — the city itself
Reference pages on the place rather than the trip: its history, its architecture, the river that keeps rearranging it, and how a country of ten million came to brew the beer everyone else copied.
The Vltava in Prague: the river the city keeps arguing withSmetana set it to music, floods keep rewriting it, and every good view in Prague has it somewhere in the frame. A biography of the river.13 August 2026 · 9 min read
Czech: a field guide to the language with the impossible letterIt has a consonant almost no other language on earth uses, sentences without vowels, and one word — prosím — that does five jobs at once.10 August 2026 · 9 min read
Jewish Prague: a thousand years of the Jewish TownMedieval merchants, a walled ghetto, Rabbi Loew and the golem, a mayor who financed an emperor, the clearance of the old streets, the Holocaust and a community that survived. The story behind the synagogues of Josefov.7 August 2026 · 10 min read
1968 and 1989: the Prague Spring, the tanks and the Velvet RevolutionA reform communism crushed by half a million soldiers, a student who set himself on fire, twenty years of grey 'normalisation', and then, in ten days of November, a revolution without a shot. Where it all happened, street by street.4 August 2026 · 10 min read
Charles IV and medieval Prague: the emperor who built a capitalA university, a New Town, a cathedral, a stone bridge and a castle for the crown jewels: in thirty years Charles IV turned Prague into one of the great cities of medieval Europe. The man, his builders and where to see his city today.1 August 2026 · 10 min read
Rudolf II and the alchemists: when Prague was the capital of curiosityA melancholy emperor who preferred his collections to politics turned Prague Castle into Europe's meeting place for astronomers, painters and alchemists. Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Arcimboldo, Edward Kelley — and the legends that grew around them.29 July 2026 · 10 min read
Prague architecture: a thousand years of styles in one walkRomanesque rotundas, Gothic spires, Renaissance sgraffito, Baroque domes, Art Nouveau cafés, Cubist houses found nowhere else, functionalist villas, a socialist-realist hotel and a building that dances. How to read Prague's buildings, style by style.26 July 2026 · 11 min read
Prague's café tradition: where writers, rebels and regulars drank coffeeKafka argued at the Louvre, dissidents met at the Slavia, Cubists drank under crystal lamps at the Orient. The story of the Prague café from the Habsburg era through communism to the specialty coffee of today — and the grand rooms you can still sit in.23 July 2026 · 9 min read
Forty-one years of communism, and where Prague still shows itThe regime arrived with a speech on Old Town Square in 1948 and left with a crowd on Národní třída in 1989. Between the two dates it executed its own, built the largest Stalin in the world, and housed a third of the country in prefabricated concrete.20 July 2026 · 9 min read
The city one storey above itself: underground PragueMedieval Prague raised its own street level to escape the river, burying its ground floors. Underneath today's Old Town sit Romanesque halls, fortress tunnels holding the real Charles Bridge statues, and a nuclear shelter for 1,300 people.17 July 2026 · 8 min read
The Czech koruna: the crown that survived two splits and stayed out of the euroBorn from the ruins of Austria-Hungary, reborn when Czechoslovakia split, and still not replaced by the euro. The story of the koruna, who is on the banknotes, and how not to lose money changing it.14 July 2026 · 8 min read
The origins of Czech cuisine: dumplings, sauces and a kitchen shaped by empireSvíčková, goulash, roast pork with dumplings and cabbage, Christmas carp: where Czech food comes from, what Vienna and Budapest gave it, what communism did to it, and where to eat it well in Prague.11 July 2026 · 9 min read
Czech beer: a thousand years of brewing, one golden revolutionMonks brewed it, kings granted the right to make it, a Bavarian brewer in Plzeň turned it gold, and communism froze it in time. How beer became the Czech national drink.8 July 2026 · 9 min read
Prague's trams and metro: how the city learned to moveHorse trams in 1875, an electric line by the inventor František Křižík, the red Tatra trams the world copied, a Cold War metro built deep enough to be a shelter, and the flood that drowned it.5 July 2026 · 9 min read
Music in Prague: Mozart's favourite audience, Smetana's river and Dvořák's hallMozart premiered Don Giovanni here, Smetana turned the Vltava into music, Dvořák conducted the first concert of the Czech Philharmonic, and a rock band's trial helped spark Charter 77. A guide to the musical city — and how to choose a concert that is worth it.2 July 2026 · 9 min read
Czechoslovakia and the First Republic: twenty years of democracy in PragueBorn from the collapse of Austria-Hungary on 28 October 1918, led by a philosopher-president, rich in industry, jazz and modern architecture, and betrayed at Munich twenty years later. The story of the republic Czechs still look back to.29 June 2026 · 10 min read
Statues and memory: how Prague argues with its monumentsA Marian column torn down in 1918 and rebuilt in 2020, the biggest Stalin in the world blown up in 1962, a Soviet tank painted pink, a Soviet marshal removed in 2020, and David Černý's provocations. What Prague's statues say about who the city wants to be.26 June 2026 · 10 min read