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'Hanging Out' Sculpture
Here's more inspired madness from artist David Černý. Look up at this corner; you'll see a bearded, bespectacled chap not unlike Sigmund Freud casually dangling by one hand from a pole way above the street. In Czech the 1997 'Hanging Out' is called Viselec .
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'Piss' Sculpture
Cries of disbelief, laughter and raised cameras greet this saucy animatronic sculpture of two guys pissing in a puddle shaped like the Czech Republic. However, you can have even more fun with Proudy (2004) by David Černý. The microchip-controlled sculptures are writing out famous Prague literary quotations. Send an SMS to +420 724 370 770 and they'll pause mid-flow to spell out your message instead.
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'Quo Vadis' Sculpture
Not strictly a public monument, this golden Trabant car on four legs is a David Černý tribute to 4000 East Germans who occupied the garden of the then West German Embassy in 1989, before being granted political asylum and leaving their Trabants behind. Today's German embassy is happy for you to peer through its back fence at the sculpture. Continue uphill along Vlašská, turn left into a children's park, and left again to find it.
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Aircraft Museum
The Kbely airfield in northeastern Prague is home to this aircraft museum where you can have a close look at Russian MiG fighter planes and a host of exhibits on aeronautics and space flight. The impressive collection amounts to no less than 275 aircraft.
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Archbishop's Palace
Opposite the Schwarzenberg Palace is the rococo Archbishop's Palace, bought by Archbishop Antonín Brus of Mohelnice in 1562, and the seat of archbishops ever since. The exterior was given a rococo makeover between 1763 and 1765.
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Army Museum
On the way up Žižkov Hill you will find this grim-looking barracks of a museum, which displays a courtyard full of rusting tanks, and exhibits on the history of the Czechoslovak army and resistance movement from 1918 to 1945. There is also a fascinating exhibition on the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, with pride of place going to the Mercedes in which Heydrich was travelling when the attack took place.
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Astronomical Clock
Ironically, if you wish to tell the time in the Old Town Sq, it's easier to look at the clock above this, because this 1490 mechanical marvel is tricky to decipher. The clock's creator, Master Hanuš, was allegedly blinded so he could not duplicate the clock elsewhere, although this is undoubtedly a myth.
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Basilica of St George
The striking, brick-red, early-baroque façade that dominates the square conceals the Czech Republic's best-preserved Romanesque church, established in the 10th century by Vratislav I (the father of St Wenceslas). What you see today is mostly the result of restorations made between 1887 and 1908.
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Bethlehem Chapel
On Bethlehem Square (Betlémské náměstí) is one of Prague's most important churches, the Bethlehem Chapel, true birthplace of the Hussite cause. In 1391, Reformist Praguers won permission to build a church where services could be held in Czech instead of Latin, and proceeded to construct the biggest chapel Bohemia had ever seen, able to hold 3000 worshippers.
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Bílek Villa
In the deep south of Dejvice, near the northeastern edge of Hradčany, is the striking, red-brick villa designed by the sculptor František Bílek in 1911 as his own home. It now houses a museum of his unconventional stone and wood reliefs, furniture and graphics.
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Břevnov Monastery
Břevnov Monastery is the Czech Republic's oldest Benedictine monastery, founded in 993 by Boleslav II and Bishop Vojtěch Slavníkovec (later to be canonised as St Adalbert). The two men, from powerful and opposing families intent on dominating Bohemia, met at Vojtěška spring, each having had a dream that this was the place where they should found a monastery. Its name comes from břevno (beam), after the beam laid across the spring where they met.
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Casemates
At the 19th-century Brick Gate (Cihelná brána) on the northern side of the fortress is the entrance to the vaulted casemates beneath the ramparts. The chambers now house a museum exhibit explaining the history of Prague's fortifications.
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Castle Entrance
The main gate, on Hradčany Sq, is flanked by huge, 18th-century statues of battling Titans, which dwarf the guards beneath. Playwright-turned-president Václav Havel brought some pizzazz to the castle after 1989, when he hired the Czech costume designer on the film Amadeus to redesign the guards' uniforms and then instigated a changing of the guard ceremony. The most impressive display is at , when banners are exchanged and a band plays.
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Černin Palace
Prague is infamous for defenestrations, where hapless political opponents have been hurtled from windows. One occurred here. In 1948 Jan Masaryk - son of first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Masaryk and the only non-communist in the post-war government - 'fell' to his death from his top-floor bathroom. Used as SS headquarters during WWII, the 17th-century building now houses the foreign ministry.
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Charles Bridge
Strolling across Charles Bridge is everybody's favourite Prague activity. However, by it's a 500m-long fairground, with an army of tourists squeezing through a gauntlet of hawkers and buskers, beneath the impassive gaze of the imposing baroque statues that line the parapets (see the boxed text, ). If you want to experience the bridge at its most atmospheric it's best appreciated at dawn.
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Charles University (Karolinum)
Central Europe's oldest university, founded by Charles IV in 1348, was originally housed in the so-called Rotlev House (Železná 9; -00M024B). With Protestantism and Czech nationalism on the rise, the reforming preacher Jan Hus became rector in 1402 and soon persuaded Wenceslas IV to slash the voting rights of the university's German students - thousands of them left Bohemia when this was announced.
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Charles University Botanical Garden
Just south of Karlovo náměstí (entrances on Viničná and Vyšehradská) is Charles University's botanical garden. Founded in 1775 and moved from Smíchov to its present site in 1898, it's the country's oldest botanical garden. The steep, hillside garden concentrates on Central European flora and is especially pretty in spring.
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Children's Island
Prague's smallest island offers a leafy respite from the hustle and bustle of the city, with a selection of swings, slides climbing frames and sandpits to keep the kids busy, as well as a rope swing, skateboard ramp, mini football pitch, netball court, and lots of open space for older siblings to run wild. There are plenty of benches to take the strain off weary parental legs, and a decent bar and restaurant at the southern end.
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Church Of Our Lady Before Týn
The distinctive, spiky-topped Týn Church is early Gothic, though it takes some imagination to visualise the original in its entirety because it's partly hidden behind the four-storey Týn School (not a Habsburg plot to obscure this 15th-century Hussite stronghold, but almost contemporaneous with it). The church's name originates from a courtyard called Týnský dvůr, or just Týn, behind the church on Štupartská. Originally a sort of medieval caravanserai for visiting foreign merchants, the attractively renovated courtyard now houses shops, restaurants and hotels.
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Church of Our Lady of the Snows
The most sublime attraction in the neighbourhood is this Gothic church at the northern end of Wenceslas Square. It was begun in the 14th century by Charles IV but only the chancel was ever completed, which accounts for its proportions - seemingly taller than it is long.
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Church Of Our Lady Victorious
When a miracle-working 'Bambino di Praga' statue appears in classic Czech novel I served the King of England , it sounds purely fictional. Yet this church really does contain a 400-year-old, wax 'Baby Jesus of Prague', said to have protected the city for centuries. The tradition of dressing the 47cm-tall figure from a wardrobe of 70 costumes continues today, with nuns changing his robes according to a religious calendar.
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Church Of SS Peter & Paul
Vratislav II's Church of SS Peter and Paul has been built and rebuilt over the centuries, culminating in a neogothic workover by Josef Mocker in the 1880s. The twin steeples, a distinctive feature of the Vyšehrad skyline, were added in 1903. The interior is a swirling acid trip of colourful Art Nouveau frescoes, painted in the 1920s by various Czech artists.
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Church Of St Giles
With stocky Romanesque columns, tall Gothic windows, and an exuberant baroque interior, St Giles is a good place to ponder the architectural development of Prague's religious buildings. The church was founded in 1371. The proto-Hussite reformer Jan Milíč of Kroměříž preached here before the Bethlehem Chapel was built. The Dominicans gained possession during the Counter-Reformation, built a cloister next door and 'baroquefied' it in the 1730s. Václav Reiner, the Czech painter who created the ceiling frescoes, is buried here.
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Church Of St James
The great Gothic mass of kostel sv Jakuba, to the east of Týnský dvůr, began in the 14th century as a Minorite monastery church, but was given a beautiful baroque facelift in the early 18th century. Pride of place inside goes to the over-the-top tomb of Count Jan Vratislav of Mitrovice, an 18th-century lord chancellor of Bohemia, in the northern aisle.
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Church Of St Nicholas
The baroque wedding cake in the northwestern corner of the square is the Church of St Nicholas, built in the 1730s by Kilian Dientzenhofer (not to be confused with at least two other St Nicholas churches in Prague, including the Dientzenhofers' masterwork in Malá Strana).
