Barrandov

The southern suburb of Barrandov, on the western bank of the Vltava River, was developed in the 1930s by Václav Havel, the father of ex-president Havel. It is famous for the Barrandov Studios, the film studios founded by Miloš Havel (the ex-president’s uncle) in 1931 and increasingly popular with Hollywood producers in recent years: Mission Impossible (1996), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), Casino Royale (2006) and the first two ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ movies (2005 and 2008) all made use of the facilities here. The district was deliberately developed as an homage to 1920s Hollywood, with the Jazz Age architect Max Urban commissioned to create the Barrandov Terraces, an upmarket complex of Art Deco mansions, villas and apartments ranged along a bluff overlooking the Vltava River, in conscious imitation of the Hollywood Hills. Sadly, the district was ‘nationalised’ and neglected during the communist era and fell into disrepair; the best views of its crumbling splendour are from the opposite side of the river. The suburb was named after the 19th-century French geologist Joachim Barrande, who studied the fossils in the contorted limestone of the Barrandov Cliffs (Barrandovské skály) – hundreds of them are on display in the National Museum.