Czechia · Old Town
Prague
A self-guided walking tour of the Prague Old Town, every street in one day.
Every street on the menu.
Every street in the Old Town of Prague is a line of dots you collect by walking it. I have been lying in one of them for six hundred years and I am still not finished.
At a glance
Plan your walk.
- Distance
- 27.3 km
- Time
- about 8 hours
- Streets
- 109
- Steps
- 4 streets with steps
- Start point
- Staroměstský orloj
- Phone needed while walking
- no
- Works offline
- yes
- Expires
- never
The Old Town
Every street, drawn.
Every lane inside that line is a course. The circles are fruit.
Landmarks
What I would eat first.
Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.
Staroměstský orloj 1,500 points
There is a crowd on this square with its collective head tilted back, all facing the same wall, all waiting. They know when. Stand with them and find out, or walk on and hear it happen behind you.
Karlův most 500 points
Everybody wants to be on this bridge at the same moment you do. Go at seven in the morning and it is almost empty. Go at noon and you will be eating elbows.
Prašná brána 500 points
A dark tower standing on its own in the middle of the street, attached to nothing, leading nowhere. It was a way in once. The wall it belonged to is gone and it stayed behind. Its name is a plain answer to what it once contained, and I am not translating it for you.
Španělská synagoga 500 points
From the street it gives you almost nothing. The name is a puzzle and the outside will not solve it. Go in. Then come back out and look at the plain wall again.
Anežský klášter 250 points
Right at the quiet river end of the Old Town, where the tour groups have long since turned back. A long building around a cloister, a gallery now, full of art from the Middle Ages. Walk the cloister first. Whoever put this here is the better story, and I am saving it for when you get there.
Krannerova kašna 250 points
Everyone walks past this one on the way to the river. It is a tall carved spire covered in small statues, and not a soul stops. Stop. Count them.
náměstí Jana Palacha 250 points
A wide open square where the emptiness is the point, bordered on two sides by things that take themselves very seriously. It carries a person's name. That name is the heaviest thing here. Look it up somewhere that is not me.
Staroměstská mostecká věž 250 points
You will walk under this one without looking at it, because the bridge is on the other side and the bridge is what you came for. Stop in the archway. Look up at the underside. Then come out and look at what is cut into the face of it.
Eating
Actual food.
Czech cooking was built from what grew here. Potatoes, cabbage and pulses, and then Vienna arrived and left the sweet half behind. Nearly everything comes with a dumpling. There is more than one kind of dumpling, and people will explain all of them to you.
Meat and fish
Pražská šunka
Prague ham comes three ways: on the bone, off the bone, and in a tin. Europe registered the name in 2018 after six years of argument, with four countries objecting. It is the only food carrying this city's name that can prove it.
Sources: EUR-Lex
Svíčková na smetaně
Beef under a thick root vegetable sauce, with bread dumplings, cranberry and a spoon of cream. The first written recipe is from 1826, in the first cookbook ever written in Czech. The dish is named after the cut of meat, and then the sauce quietly took the name for itself.
Sources: Czech Radio, CzechTourism, BurdaMedia
Chlebíčky
Open sandwiches, built in a delicatessen window and sold one at a time. A shop on Národní started making them in 1916 and this city has never stopped. Point at the one you want, because the labels will not help you.
Sources: Expats.cz, CzechTourism, Vltava Labe Media
Vegetarian
Smažený sýr
A thick slab of Edam in breadcrumbs, fried, with chips. It reached a grand hotel menu on Wenceslas Square in 1936, and every works canteen by the 1960s. The tartare sauce that comes with it is not optional.
Sources: CzechTourism, FTV Prima, Vltava Labe Media
Ovocné knedlíky
Dumplings with whole fruit inside, boiled, then buried under poppy seed, curd and melted butter. The first written recipe is from the seventeenth century, when they were fried and filled with plums. Here they are a main course and not a pudding, and nobody finds that strange.
Sources: Czech Radio, CzechTourism, FTV Prima
Bramborák
Grated potato with garlic and marjoram, fried flat and eaten straight off the pan. The marjoram is the difference between a Czech one and just a potato pancake. There are at least thirty two regional names for it, which tells you how seriously this is taken.
Ask what it is fried in. The traditional answer is lard, and plenty of kitchens still give it.
Sources: Czech Radio, CzechTourism, BurdaMedia
Vegan
Two dishes, and the reason is history rather than neglect. The old Bohemian fasting kitchen ran on potatoes, cabbage, lentils, peas, groats and root vegetables, which is a plant diet by necessity rather than by choice. The modern half is much easier. A vegan directory put this city in its top ten in the world, with about fifty vegan kitchens for a city of a little over a million.
Čočka na kyselo
Lentils cooked soft and sharpened with vinegar, with fried onion on top. Czechs eat this on the first of January because a lentil is the shape of a coin and the year needs the help. It works the rest of the year too.
It usually arrives with a fried egg and smoked meat on it. Ask for it plain, because the lentils underneath are the whole dish.
Sources: BurdaMedia, Vltava Labe Media, Kupi.cz
Houbový kuba
Barley baked with dried forest mushrooms, garlic and marjoram, until the top goes crisp. It is the lunch on Christmas Eve, because no meat is eaten until the evening. It was poor people's food for centuries and then somebody noticed it was very good.
Ask what fat is used. The old recipe is lard, and a kitchen will often use oil instead if you ask.
Sources: Czech Radio, BurdaMedia, Extra Publishing
Late breakfast
Den Noc where locals go
Templová 648/7
Lívance, the Czech pancake, made fresh every day from a family recipe. Sweet ones with jam and fruit, savoury ones with egg, bacon or salmon. Breakfast and brunch only, from a family that runs this one room on Templová. I start sweet and finish with the salmon.
- Mon08:30–15:00
- Tue08:30–15:00
- Wed08:30–15:00
- Thu08:30–15:00
- Fri08:30–15:00
- Sat08:30–15:00
- Sun08:30–15:00
No reservations, so walk in. It closes at three in the afternoon.
Sources: Maurerův výběr
Afternoon coffee
OneSip Coffee Haštalská come for the one thing: the Candycane coffee
Haštalská 755/15
A tiny espresso bar on Haštalská, and sometimes one of the two owners is the one pouring. In 2017 they started their own roastery, Candycane, which publishes what it paid for nearly all the coffee it buys. Its beans share the counter with other roasters'. That is a lot of coffee per square metre.
- Mon07:30–18:00
- Tue07:30–18:00
- Wed07:30–18:00
- Thu07:30–18:00
- Fri07:30–18:00
- Sat08:30–17:00
- Sun08:30–17:00
Sources: Sprudge, Prague City Tourism
Mistral Café where locals go
Valentinská 56/11
Espresso or filter coffee, and breakfast to go with it. Eggs, or an acai bowl if the morning wants fruit. It sits on Valentinská, a side street at the west end of the Old Town. Filter coffee takes its time. I have more of that than anyone.
- Mon08:00–18:00
- Tue08:00–18:00
- Wed08:00–18:00
- Thu08:00–18:00
- Fri08:00–18:00
- Sat08:30–18:00
- Sun08:30–18:00
Sources: Maurerův výběr, European Coffee Trip
Dinner
Lehká hlava the old one
Boršov 280/2
A vegetarian kitchen on Boršov, a crooked lane said to be the shortest street in Prague and nearly impossible for a car. It opened in 2005 in a room that used to be a tearoom, and it is still at the same door. The name means clear head. By my standards it has only just unpacked.
- Mon11:30–23:00
- Tue11:30–23:00
- Wed11:30–23:00
- Thu11:30–23:00
- Fri11:30–23:00
- Sat12:00–23:00
- Sun12:00–23:00
Book online first, because it fills up. From four to half past five there is only a short menu, and the hot kitchen stops an hour before closing.
Sources: Maurerův výběr, Expats.cz
Maitrea come for the one thing: the feng shui dining room
Týnská ulička 1064/6
A vegetarian restaurant on Týnská ulička, a quiet lane near Old Town Square. The interior is laid out by feng shui over two floors, and the cooking is the kind people who eat meat enjoy too. It shares its owners with Lehká hlava, and this one is the room. I was laid by a road crew, and nobody asked about my feng shui.
- Mon11:30–23:00
- Tue11:30–23:00
- Wed11:30–23:00
- Thu11:30–23:00
- Fri11:30–23:00
- Sat12:00–23:00
- Sun12:00–23:00
Sources: Maurerův výběr, Prague City Tourism
U Tří růží where locals go
Husova 232/10
Czech home cooking at big tables, priced well below what a cobbled address this central usually asks. No medieval costume act inside, just old rooms joined to new ones by good wooden furniture. Eating here feels like taking a small corner of the tourist zone back for the people who live in it.
- Mon11:00–23:00
- Tue11:00–23:00
- Wed11:00–23:00
- Thu11:00–24:00
- Fri11:00–24:00
- Sat11:00–24:00
- Sun11:00–23:00
Sources: Prague Post, Maurerův výběr, Svět piva (pivo-pivo.cz)
Checked 25 September 2026.
With kids
Short legs, big appetite.
The streets here are full of dots to collect, and a child on a hunt forgets to be tired. Here is a short loop for the smallest walkers.
- The loop
- Staroměstský orloj, Staroměstská mostecká věž, Karlův most, Krannerova kašna, and back to the start
- Distance
- 1.9 km
- Time
- about 40 minutes of walking at a child's pace (3 km/h)
- Steps
- no streets with steps on the loop
- Playgrounds
- 1 near the loop
- Public toilets
- 9 near the loop
- Drinking water
- 1 near the loop
- Ice cream
- 4 near the loop
Near the loop means within 150 m of it, counted from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Name origin
Why it is called Prague.
Nobody has settled this one. The likeliest reading is práh, a threshold: the shelf of rock that breaks the Vltava where the ford was. Others say burnt ground, cleared by fire, or simply a dry place the sun got at. Three answers, one river crossing, and a city named after the shallow part.
Sources: www.ptejteseknihovny.cz
Why here
Somebody stood here and decided.
Look at the bend. The river swings round and leaves a wide low terrace on the right bank, with good soil, enough water, and a ford that sat sheltered between the spur at one end and the rock at the other. Somebody worked out you could get across here. Everything you are about to walk sits on that terrace.
Sources: iprpraha.cz p. 2
Why then
When the first stone went down.
The castle went up on the other bank at the end of the ninth century. This side took longer, and it grew the way a spill spreads: houses along roads that were already running through, thickening around the market, nobody planning anything. Deliberate plots only arrived after 1230. That is why the lanes here bend and the newer part does not.
Sources: iprpraha.cz p. 1
Who ruled
Everyone who thought they owned this.
I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.
- 850–1306
The Přemyslids. They put a castle on the far bank in the second half of the ninth century and ran Bohemia from it for four hundred years. The male line ran out in 1306. Dynasties are like lanes. They stop without warning and you are suddenly somewhere else.
Sources: mzv.gov.cz
- 1310–1437
The house of Luxembourg, and the good century. Charles the Fourth ruled from 1346 to 1378 and spent all of it building. Most of what you came here to look at was his idea. I am not listing it. Walk it.
Sources: mzv.gov.cz; whc.unesco.org
- 1526–1918
The Habsburgs took the Bohemian throne in 1526 and kept it for very nearly four hundred years. For long stretches the court sat somewhere else entirely, and a city notices that. Prague spent a good part of those centuries being magnificent and being nobody's capital.
Sources: mzv.gov.cz
- 1918–
On the twenty eighth of October 1918 the Czechs and Slovaks declared a state of their own, and Prague became its capital. It has been a capital ever since, of one country and then of another. I stayed put through all of it.
Sources: mzv.gov.cz
The emblem
What the shield means.
A red shield, a golden wall with silver battlements, and three golden towers standing behind it. The gate in the middle is open, with its grid pulled right up. An open gate on a shield is a decision. This one has been standing open a long time, and I walked in.
Sources: cs.wikipedia.org
Emblem: Public domain — official coat of arms (Wikimedia Commons)
Three facts
Three things I know about this place.
The ground you are walking on is not the original ground. Around the middle of the thirteenth century the Old Town was filled in with soil, three to five metres of it, to keep the river out. The Romanesque ground floors went under and stayed under. Plenty of them survive as cellars, one storey below your feet.
Sources: regiony.rozhlas.cz; praha.aiscr.cz
The shape of these lanes was nobody's plan. The Old Town thickened along roads that were already running through it, spreading out around the market, with no layout at all. Somebody only started measuring out plots after 1230. You can still feel where the planning starts.
Sources: iprpraha.cz p. 1
Prague was never comprehensively rebuilt, which is the only reason a medieval street plan is still here to be walked. There is one exception and it is a loud one. From 1893 the old Jewish quarter and the streets around it were cleared: 469 houses came down, and Pařížská was laid dead straight through where the lanes had been. I remember the lanes. A straight street is easier to eat and I miss them anyway.
Sources: whc.unesco.org; ct24.ceskatelevize.cz
Street words
What the names on the signs mean.
- náměstí
- A square, and the commonest street word here by a distance. Thirteen of them in this Old Town alone, so "meet me at the square" settles nothing.
- nábřeží
- The embankment along the water. There are five, and every one of them is named after a person rather than a place: Alšovo, Dvořákovo, Smetanovo.
- ulička
- A lane, but the little one. Havelská ulička and Týnská ulička are the two here, and both are exactly as wide as the word suggests.
- pasáž
- A street with a roof on it, cut straight through the middle of a block. Platýz is one. They are shortcuts, and I approve of a city that hides shortcuts inside buildings.
- U
- At the. Prague names a street after whatever it stands next to: U Radnice, U Prašné brány, U Staré školy. The street does not get a name of its own, it gets a neighbour.
- Na
- On the. Na Příkopě means on the moat, and there is no moat. Na Můstku means at the little bridge, and there is no bridge. Both names are older than the ground you are standing on.
The size of it
Walk it in a day: Prague in numbers.
Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.
- 109streets
- 1,424dots
- 22.1km of street
- 27.3km on foot
- 8hours at a stroll
Nearby
Old Towns close to this one.
The game
Your first city is free.
Cobble Gobble is a walking game for iPhone. Claim any city as your free one. Every other city is a one-time purchase you keep for good, Family Sharing included, and a city you own plays fully offline.