The Most Beautiful Places in Prague
14 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Prague are Prague Castle, Dancing House and Church of Our Lady before Týn. The list covers 14 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Prague grew on both banks of the Vltava as the seat of Bohemian dukes and kings, and under Charles IV in the fourteenth century it became one of the great cities of Europe. Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque builders added to it in turn, and because the historic centre came through the twentieth century largely intact, the layers still stand side by side: castle above, Old Town and Jewish Town below, the river between.
Prague Castle crowns the hill as a whole district of palaces, courtyards and churches. Inside it, St. Vitus Cathedral was begun in Gothic times and finished only in the twentieth century, and Golden Lane keeps its row of tiny painted houses against the walls. Below, the Charles Bridge, begun under Charles IV, crosses the river between Baroque statues of saints. In the Lesser Town, St. Nicholas Church is a summit of Bohemian Baroque, while the twin Gothic spires of the Church of Our Lady before Týn rise over Old Town Square, where the medieval astronomical clock still turns.
The Jewish Town keeps the Old Jewish Cemetery, its gravestones crowded and tilting over layered burials, and the Moorish Revival Spanish Synagogue, gilded inside. The Clementinum, a former Jesuit college, holds a Baroque library hall of painted ceilings and globes. The Estates Theatre saw the premiere of Mozart's Don Giovanni, and the Dancing House by Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunić gives the riverbank a modern twist.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prague Castle | Castle | |
| 2 | Dancing House | Monument | |
| 3 | Church of Our Lady before Týn | Church building | |
| 4 | Clementinum | Library building | |
| 5 | St. Vitus Cathedral | Cathedral | |
| 6 | Charles Bridge | Bridge | ✓ |
| 7 | Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague | Cemetery | |
| 8 | St. Nicholas Church | Church building | |
| 9 | Prague Astronomical Clock | Clock tower | |
| 10 | Spanish Synagogue, Prague | Synagogue | |
| 11 | Estates Theatre | Opera house | |
| 12 | Golden Lane | Pedestrian street | |
| 13 | Strahov Monastery Library | Library building | |
| 14 | Jubilee Synagogue, Prague | Synagogue |
01 Prague Castle
Pražský hrad
Czech Republic · 1.7 km from Prague50.090° N 14.400° E
Image by peter89ba from Pixabay Few castles have been a seat of power for as long as this one. The first walled church on the ridge above the Vltava went up around 870, and more than eleven centuries later the complex is still the office of the Czech head of state.
Did you know? Vladislav Hall, 62 metres long with a vault spanning 16 metres, was big enough for knightly tournaments, so its staircase was built wide enough for horses.
02 Dancing House
Tančící dům
Czech Republic · 1.4 km from Prague50.076° N 14.414° E
Image by pierre9x6 from Pixabay On the Vltava embankment in Prague, among rows of 19th-century apartment houses, one building seems to sway: a glass tower pinched at the waist leans against a solid partner whose windows bob up and down across a rippling façade.
Did you know? The earlier house on the site was destroyed in an American air raid on 14 February 1945.
03 Church of Our Lady before Týn
Kostel Panny Marie před Týnem
Czech Republic · 0.1 km from Prague50.088° N 14.423° E
Image by Leonhard_Niederwimmer from Pixabay The two dark spires of the Týn Church, each bristling with smaller turrets, form the backdrop of Prague's Old Town Square. They are the image most people carry home from the city.
Did you know? Brahe's hair contained gold at 20 to 100 times today's typical levels, perhaps from gilded tableware, alchemical elixirs or his laboratory work.
04 Clementinum
Klementinum
Czech Republic · 0.5 km from Prague50.087° N 14.416° E
VitVit · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Clementinum is less a single building than a small town of learning, folded into the Old Town of Prague a few steps from the Charles Bridge.
Did you know? The Jesuit mathematician and astronomer Joseph Stepling founded the observatory in the tower in the early 1750s.
05 St. Vitus Cathedral
Katedrála svatého Víta v Praze
Czech Republic · 1.7 km from Prague50.091° N 14.401° E
Image by Duernsteiner from Pixabay St Vitus Cathedral, formally dedicated to Saints Vitus, Wenceslaus and Adalbert, is the seat of the Archbishop of Prague and the largest and most important church in the Czech Republic. 8 m high, and holds the tombs of Bohemian kings and Holy Roman emperors.
Did you know? Mucha's window of Saints Cyril and Methodius was paid for by the Slavia bank, and the artist worked the bank's emblem, a female figure of Slavia, into the design.
06 Charles Bridge
Czech Republic · 0.8 km from Prague50.086° N 14.412° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Zef51 from Pixabay The most-repeated story about Charles Bridge is that its mortar was strengthened with eggs, shipped in from towns and villages across Bohemia on the emperor's order.
Did you know? The bridge is about 516 metres long and 9.5 metres wide, carried across the Vltava on 16 arches.
07 Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague
Czech Republic · 0.5 km from Prague50.090° N 14.417° E
Image by Nicolas-Debray from Pixabay The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague's Josefov is one of the most important Jewish burial grounds in Europe, and one of the most affecting places in the city. More than 12,000 tombstones stand here, packed so closely that they lean against one another in every direction.
Did you know? A low mound called the Nephele holds children who died before the age of one month, along with remains found during the clearance of the old ghetto.
08 St. Nicholas Church
Kostel svatého Mikuláše na Malé Straně
Czech Republic · 1.4 km from Prague50.088° N 14.404° E
VitVit · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Church of St Nicholas dominates the Lesser Town of Prague with its great copper dome and slender bell tower, and inside it is often called the finest Baroque church in the city.
Did you know? The tower's only bell, called Mikuláš and weighing about 350 kilograms, was cast in 1526, long before the present church existed.
09 Prague Astronomical Clock
Staroměstský orloj
Czech Republic · 0.2 km from Prague50.087° N 14.421° E
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay The Prague Orloj is a medieval astronomical clock set into the south wall of the Old Town Hall on Old Town Square, and it has been telling time, and a good deal more, since 1410.
Did you know? According to legend, the blinded clockmaker took revenge by disabling the clock, and nobody could repair it for a hundred years.
10 Spanish Synagogue, Prague
Španělská synagoga
Czech Republic · 0.4 km from Prague50.090° N 14.421° E
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 Of the synagogues in Prague's old Jewish Town, Josefov, the Spanish Synagogue is the youngest and by far the most ornate. It stands on the site of the Altschul, the "Old School", an older synagogue that it replaced.
Did you know? A functionalist annex designed by the architect Karel Pecánek was added beside the synagogue in 1935.
11 Estates Theatre
Stavovské divadlo
Czech Republic · 0.1 km from Prague50.086° N 14.424° E
VitVit · CC BY-SA 4.0 Prague's Estates Theatre is the one working playhouse in the world where Mozart himself conducted the first performance of an opera still in the repertoire.
Did you know? The first Czech opera, František Škroup's The Tinker, had its premiere here on 2 February 1826.
12 Golden Lane
Zlatá ulička
Czech Republic · 1.5 km from Prague50.092° N 14.404° E
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 Golden Lane — Zlatá ulička in Czech — is a single row of tiny houses tucked against the northern wall of Prague Castle, so small that a tall visitor has to stoop at many of the doorways.
Did you know? In the 19th century residents charged curious visitors a fee to peer from their windows into the Stag Moat, which was otherwise closed to the public.
13 Strahov Monastery Library
Strahovský klášter
Czech Republic · 2.4 km from Prague50.086° N 14.389° E
Barnos · CC BY-SA 4.0 High on the hill behind Prague Castle, the Premonstratensian canons have kept their monastery at Strahov since 1143, when it was founded by Duke Vladislaus II and Bishop Jindřich Zdík after a first attempt three years earlier had failed.
Did you know? Spiral staircases hidden in the corners of the Philosophical Hall lead up to the gallery that runs along its upper shelves.
14 Jubilee Synagogue, Prague
Jeruzalémská synagoga
Czech Republic · 0.7 km from Prague50.085° N 14.432° E
Image by Laura_Maxim from Pixabay The Jubilee Synagogue is the most colourful building in Prague's New Town, and one of the most unexpected.
Did you know? Construction took just fifteen months, from 26 June 1905 to its consecration on 16 September 1906, the festival of Simchat Torah.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Prague?
- On our list, Prague Castle ranks first, followed by Dancing House and Church of Our Lady before Týn.
- How old is the Prague Astronomical Clock?
- The clock was installed on the Old Town Hall in 1410, which makes it one of the oldest astronomical clocks in the world and the oldest still in operation.
- Which opera premiered at the Estates Theatre?
- Mozart's Don Giovanni had its premiere there in 1787, with Mozart himself conducting.
- How long did it take to build St. Vitus Cathedral?
- Construction began in 1344 under Charles IV, but the cathedral was only completed in 1929, almost six centuries later.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Prague?
- In our collection, the places in Prague are most often churches (3), synagogues (2), monuments (2) and libraries (2).
- How many places are on this list in Prague?
- The list covers 14 places.