The astronomical clock
The world's oldest astronomical clock still running, from 1410; its hourly parade of apostles is the appointment the whole square keeps.
Estec GmbH, Billig Hotel in Prag — CC BY 3.0 · Jakub Hałun — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Paul Korecky — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Paul Korecky — CC BY-SA 2.0
In front of the tower but at least ten metres back, otherwise you are craning straight up. Best is near the Hus memorial: you get the show and the square in one frame.
Yes — Middle Eastern and Turkish halal places cluster five to ten minutes' walk towards Wenceslas Square and Vodičkova street. Always check the halal certificate displayed at the door.
Yes if you have the time — there is a glass lift, not just stairs, and from the top the square reads like a painting: red roofs, the Týn church, the castle behind. It is the best close-up viewpoint in the city.
Three things: street money changers in the side lanes with deceptive rates (use ATMs or a proper bureau), carriage drivers with no agreed price, and pickpockets during the clock show, when everyone is looking up.
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The Old Town Square has been Prague's living room since the 12th century: first a market, then an execution ground, then a place of protest, and today where every visitor starts the day. What makes it remarkable is not its size but that every façade around it comes from a different era — Gothic, Baroque, Rococo, Renaissance — and yet the whole thing looks as if it were designed in a single afternoon. At its centre stands the memorial to Jan Hus, the Czech reformer burned at the stake in 1415, unveiled in 1915 on the 500th anniversary of his death. On the ground near the town hall, twenty-seven small crosses are set into the pavement for the Protestant nobles executed here in 1621 — a detail thousands of feet cross daily without noticing. The square is always open and never ticketed. It changes completely with the season: in summer, café tables and street musicians; in December, one of Europe's best-known Christmas markets, with a huge tree and cinnamon in the air. One warning: the front-row cafés are the priciest in the city, and walking one street away roughly halves the bill.
The world's oldest astronomical clock still running, from 1410; its hourly parade of apostles is the appointment the whole square keeps.
The two spiked Gothic towers in every photograph of the square; some 80 metres tall, and deliberately not identical.
Set into the pavement by the town hall for the executions of 1621 — a piece of history everyone walks over and nobody sees.
Wooden stalls, an enormous tree and hot drinks — one of Europe's best-known Christmas markets, and worth shifting your trip dates for.
Staroměstské náměstí, Prague 1