Kampa & the Vltava Riverbanks

Waterfront · Malá Strana / KampaPrague, Czechia

Kampa is an island cut from Malá Strana by the Čertovka, a millstream narrow enough to step across, with two wooden water wheels still turning against the house walls. The channel was dug in the Middle Ages to drive those mills. The island behind it was gardens and a pottery market, and the pottery market still returns once a year. Floods have swept across it repeatedly, worst in 2002, when the water reached the first-floor windows, and again in 2013. Today it is a park of plane trees and lawns directly beneath Charles Bridge, with the Kampa Museum of modern art at the southern, upstream end. The rest of the story is the river itself. Eighteen bridges cross the Vltava inside Prague, and the embankments below them have become the city's outdoor room: concrete steps upstream at Náplavka where boats are moored as bars, a Saturday farmers' market, swans working the shallows, and joggers running the bank all the way up to Vyšehrad. On Kampa's grass the great stone arches are directly overhead, and at dawn the mist comes off the water while the castle picks up the first light.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Dawn belongs to the river — the mist sits on the water until the sun clears the Old Town roofs, and the island is empty apart from swans and the first joggers of the day.
The wheel by the Grand Priory bridge is the one to find — from that footbridge it turns directly below you against the house wall, close enough to hear.
Shoot the bridge from underneath — from the island's northern corner the arches, the water and the castle stack into one frame, which you can never get standing on the deck.

Things to do

1
Take the steps down to the water
From the Charles Bridge deck a stair drops onto Kampa at the Malá Strana end. It puts you under the arches in about thirty seconds, with the noise of the bridge overhead and the millstream running past you at ground level.
2
Follow the Čertovka on foot
The channel runs a few hundred metres between houses, crossed by three small bridges. Stand on each one: the first gives you the water wheels, the second the backs of the Baroque houses, the third the point where the stream rejoins the river.
3
Sit on the Náplavka steps at dusk
Upstream on the New Town bank, the concrete embankment steps drop straight to the water and fill up in the evening. Boats moored alongside serve drinks, the light goes down behind the castle, and the crowd is almost entirely local.