Prague fits in a weekend. Bohemia does not.
Which castle ticket gets you past the queue at Saint Vitus. What a Vltava dinner cruise really costs. Whether Český Krumlov earns a whole day out of three. Reviews of every tour you can book in Prague.
Castle hill, the clock, an hour on the river, a cellar full of beer.
The four bookings a first Prague trip hangs off. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The morning up the hillPrague Castle 2.5-Hour Tour Including Admission TicketSaint Vitus, the Old Royal Palace and Golden Lane on one guided round. Take the opening slot, before the coach groups reach the gate.
02The walk that joins it up3-Hour Walking Tour of Old Town & Prague CastleOld Town Square to the castle on foot, over Charles Bridge. Three hours, and the map finally makes sense.
03The hour on the water50-Minute Sightseeing Evening CruiseFifty minutes on the Vltava as the bridges come on. The cheapest good idea in the city.
04The evening with a glassPilsner Urquell Experience & Beer TastingA tasting round through the Pilsner Urquell cellars, unfiltered lager at the end of it. The Czechs drink more beer a head than anyone.
Tank Pilsner, a mini-brewery cellar, or a bath filled with it.
Czech lager costs less than the bottled water next to it and is taken a great deal more seriously. Four kinds of drinking day, what it costs to join each one, and what you actually get.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · Bernard Beer Spa with Beer and Massage Option
Brewery roundsTank beer at the source, tasting glass included.
Guided drinkingSomeone who knows which cellar still pours it properly.
Pub crawlsFive bars, one guide, nobody navigating at one in the morning.
Out to PilsenThe original lager, drawn unfiltered from an oak cask underground.
All 136 drinking days in Prague →
Prague was built to be looked at from the river.
Fifty minutes at dusk while the bridges come on, a glass-roofed boat with dinner served under Charles Bridge, or a paddle steamer out past Vyšehrad. The castle only looks like the postcard from one angle, and that angle is on the water.
Prague Castle: get up there at opening, come down through Malá Strana.
Everything at the Castle →
The complex is the size of a small town and the standard ticket only covers part of it. Saint Vitus takes an hour on its own, Golden Lane is shoulder to shoulder by eleven, and the walk back down through Malá Strana to the bridge is the best free thing in the city.
Plain entry, or a guide who explains it
Circuit B gets you into the cathedral, the Old Royal Palace, Saint George’s and Golden Lane. Without a guide it is a beautiful walk through rooms with no captions; with one it is nine hundred years of arguments about who was crowned where.
Old Town Hall Tower, and the clock from above
There is a lift, the queue moves, and the view puts the whole red-tiled bowl of the Old Town under you with the castle on the ridge behind. Go at the top of the hour and watch the crowd below film the apostles.
Josefov: six synagogues on one ticket
Six buildings and the Old Jewish Cemetery, where twelve thousand headstones lean over ten times as many graves. The Pinkas Synagogue carries eighty thousand names on its walls. Not a walk to squeeze in before a train.
Six Pragues, and the day out that opens each one.
The hill with the cathedral on it, the square with the clock, the quarter with six synagogues, the rooms two floors under the pavement, the river that splits the lot, and the breweries holding it all upright.
Prague’s most popular days out.
The full Prague list →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the city, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
50-Minute Sightseeing Evening Cruise
See Prague lit up from the Vltava on a 50-minute evening cruise with open-deck views, onboard commentary, and a warm indoor cabin.
From · $21
Read our review →
2
Medieval Dinner with Unlimited Drinks
from $75
3
Skip-the-line Castle Ticket and Optional AudioGuide
from $35
4
Castle Tour with Local Guide and Entry Ticket
from $61
5
Prague Castle 2.5-Hour Tour Including Admission Ticket
from $57
6
Oldtown, Medieval Underground & Dungeon History Tour
from $30
7
Vltava River Night Cruise with Buffet
from $81
8
Panoramic Vltava River Cruise
from $16
Bohemia starts about an hour past the ring road.
A river town wrapped inside its own meander, a chapel furnished with the bones of forty thousand people, sandstone towers on the German border, and a spa valley that has been treating hangovers since the fourteenth century. All day trips, and all of them leave early.
Every Český Krumlov trip →
The city has two floors, and the older one is below you.
Medieval Prague sits a couple of metres under the Old Town. When the Vltava flooded once too often the whole district was raised, and the ground floors became cellars, wells and vaulted rooms nobody filled in. Add a nuclear bunker from the other end of the century and you have the strangest half day in the city.
- 1Medieval Dinner with Unlimited Drinksfrom $75
- 2Oldtown, Medieval Underground & Dungeon History Tourfrom $30
- 3Ghost Walking Tour Where Legends Come To Lifefrom $27
What a day out in Prague actually costs.
Every tour here, grouped by price. Prague is still cheap by western European standards, and the ladder below shows exactly where that stops being true.
River cruises, tower tickets, the underground walks and very nearly all of the beer.
The full-day standards: a guided castle round, dinner on the water, Kutná Hora and Karlštejn.
Private guides, the long day out to Saxon Switzerland, and the once-a-trip splurges that earn it.
Three things that only happen in Prague.
Old squares and river boats exist all over Europe. A clock that has run since 1410, a chapel decorated in human bone, and a bath filled with warm beer do not.
The Astronomical Clock
The Old Town clock has kept time since 1410, which makes it the oldest still running anywhere. On the hour the apostles process past two small windows, a skeleton pulls a bell rope, a cockerel crows and it is over in ninety seconds. Worth standing through once. The dial underneath tracks the sun, the moon and Old Bohemian time, and almost nobody looks at it.
- 1Old Town Hall Tower Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 6,749 reviews
- 23-Hour Walking Tour of Old Town & Prague Castle★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 5,696 reviews
- 33-Hour Old Town and Prague Castle Tour in German★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 5,671 reviews
The Sedlec Ossuary
A chapel on the edge of Kutná Hora is furnished with the bones of around forty thousand people: a chandelier using every bone in the body, garlands of skulls, a coat of arms in vertebrae. A monk brought soil back from Jerusalem in the thirteenth century, everyone wanted burying in it, and by 1870 a woodcarver was handed the problem. Photography rules changed in 2020 — check before you lift a phone.
- 1Kutna Hora UNESCO Site Tour with Bone Chapel★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,917 reviews
- 2Kutná Hora, St.Barbara’s Church, Sedlec Ossuary★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 673 reviews
- 3Day Trip to Kutná Hora by train from Prague★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 587 reviews
The Beer Spa
Wooden tubs, warm water, brewer’s yeast and dark malt, a tap of unlimited lager at your elbow and a bed of straw to sweat it out on afterwards. Czechs have treated hops as medicine for a long time and the spas take it more seriously than the name suggests. An hour is plenty, and tubs are priced by the tub rather than the head, so go in pairs.
- 1Bernard Beer Spa with Beer and Massage Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 4,164 reviews
- 2Beer Spa Bernard with Beer and Massage Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 447 reviews
- 3Caroline Bernard Beer Spa Prague with Beer & Massage Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 283 reviews
Four Prague bookings that will not wait.
Most of this city can be sorted over breakfast. These four run on timed entry, small-group caps and departure boards that take no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Skip-the-line Castle Ticket and Optional AudioGuideCastle entry runs on timed slots and the cathedral caps how many people are inside. The early slots, the only quiet ones, go first.
- 02Full-Day Trip to Český KrumlovKrumlov is three hours each way and the minibuses are small. Out of season there is one departure a day, and it sells out.
- 03Kutna Hora UNESCO Site Tour with Bone ChapelThe ossuary limits how many people are inside at once and the Kutná Hora trains fill through summer. Book the tour, not the platform.
- 04Bernard Beer Spa with Beer and Massage OptionA beer spa has a handful of tubs and sells them by the hour. Weekend evenings are gone a week out.
When the square is solid and it is four below.
Two things run this city from November to March. The Old Town Square packs out around the clock on every hour, and the wind comes off the river with nothing in the way. Both have the same answer: get under a roof. Cellars, taprooms, concert halls, a warm tub.
Czech food is heavier than you expect and better than its reputation.
Goulash cooked down for six hours, pork knuckle over coals, bread dumplings that soak up the lot, and a trdelník stall on every corner selling something neither Czech nor eaten by anybody who lives here. A guide is the difference between the two.
By part of the city
By kind of day — walk, boat, cellar or road
Castle, Old Town, the river, then one full day out of the city.
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