Kampa & the Vltava Riverbanks

Waterfront · Malá Strana / KampaPrague,Czechia

A small park island beneath Charles Bridge in Prague, cut off by a millstream whose wooden wheels still turn against the house walls.

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 island itself is a park of plane trees and lawns lying directly beneath Charles Bridge, so the great stone arches are overhead while you sit on the grass. Faceless bronze babies crawl across the lawn. The Kampa Museum of modern art stands at the upstream end. This was gardens and a pottery market, and the pottery market still returns once a year. Floods have swept across the island repeatedly — worst in 2002, when the water reached the first-floor windows, and again in 2013. Beyond it the river is the city's outdoor room: eighteen bridges cross the Vltava inside Prague, swans work the shallows, and joggers run the bank all the way up to Vyšehrad. 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
Drop off the Charles Bridge deck onto Kampa
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.