Charles Bridge

Landmark · Old Town / Malá StranaPrague,Czechia

A 516-metre sandstone bridge over Prague's Vltava, begun in 1357, the castle at one end and thirty Baroque saints lining its parapet.

Charles Bridge is 516 metres of sandstone on sixteen arches, and for nearly five centuries it was the only way over the Vltava on foot. Thirty Baroque statues line the parapet, saints set up from 1683 onward; two in every three are copies now, the eroded originals kept indoors. It is still a working street, with the castle on its ridge straight ahead, which is why almost everyone crossing stops halfway. Work began in 1357. Tradition holds that Charles IV, a king who took astrology seriously, had the first stone laid at 5:31 on the ninth of July, so that the date and time read the same backwards. It replaced a Romanesque crossing that a flood had carried off fifteen years earlier, and it was wide enough for coronation processions, markets and armies. What you meet on it depends on the hour: from mid-morning it belongs to portrait painters, jazz trios and a crowd that barely moves, and before seven it is nearly empty, mist lifting off the water.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The originals are indoors, in two places — the weathered saints taken off this parapet stand in the National Museum's Lapidárium and in the Gorlice hall under Vyšehrad.
The two ends light differently — the sun comes up behind the Old Town tower and goes down behind the castle, so the same span is backlit at dawn and lit from the front at dusk.
The stalls own the middle of the day — vendors and portrait artists set up along the parapet from mid-morning to evening, and that is when the bridge stops being a walkway and becomes a queue.

Things to do

1
Cross from the Malá Strana end at first light
Start from the Malá Strana end around dawn and walk east. The mist sits low on the water, the castle behind you catches the sun before the bridge does, and for twenty minutes you share 516 metres with a handful of joggers and one saxophone player.
2
Find the polished panel
About halfway across, on the downstream parapet, stands the statue of St John of Nepomuk. Below it are two bronze reliefs, one rubbed to a gold shine by hands. Touch it as everyone does, then look at how far the shine has spread beyond the figure itself.
3
Climb the Old Town tower
The stair inside the eastern tower is tight and steep, and it opens onto a gallery just above the roofs. From there the bridge reads as a single line of statues aimed straight at the castle — the view every photograph of Prague uses, and one the deck can never give you.