Letná Park

Park · Holešovice / LetnáPrague,Czechia

A green plateau above the Vltava in Prague where a swinging red metronome stands on the plinth a Stalin monument was blown off in 1962.

Letná is a flat green plateau one steep climb above the river, and on its edge a 23-metre red metronome stands on a granite plinth, swinging. From the terrace around it the whole Old Town is spread below, with the Vltava's bridges stitched across it one behind another. Skateboarders work the stone, people drink at the wall, and this is the meeting point half of Prague names when it wants somewhere outdoors. The plinth was built for something else. A granite group with Stalin at the front stood on it from 1955 until 1962, when the state blew it up and left the base empty. The metronome arrived nearly thirty years after that. Walk west and you come to the cast-iron Hanavský Pavilion, carried up here piece by piece in 1898 from an exhibition held down in Holešovice, its terrace hanging out over the drop. Walk east instead and the park runs level under plane trees for about a kilometre, ending at a beer garden that seats several hundred under the chestnuts.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The ritual is a half-litre on the wall — people take a beer out onto the terrace parapet instead of sitting inside, and on a warm evening the entire edge is occupied.
The beer garden runs with the weather — the tables under the chestnuts fill from spring through autumn and shut down completely once it turns cold.
The climb is short and steep — the stairs up from Čechův Bridge take about ten minutes and put you out directly beside the metronome.

Things to do

1
Take the beer out to the wall at sunset
Get a half-litre from the kiosk near the metronome and find a place on the terrace parapet. The light goes down across the river, the bridges come on one by one, and the whole edge of the plateau fills with people doing exactly the same thing.
2
Walk the plateau east to the beer garden
The stairs up from Čechův Bridge take about ten minutes and are the only climbing you do; the plateau on top is flat, so the kilometre east from the metronome is level the whole way. Plane trees line the whole stretch and the drop to the river stays on your right, so the edge of the plateau is never out of sight. It ends at the beer garden under the chestnuts, several hundred seats that fill from spring through autumn and shut completely once the cold comes.
3
Walk west to the iron pavilion
It was an ironworks' own pavilion at the 1891 exhibition down in Holešovice. When that closed the works' owner, Prince Vilém of Hanau, gave it to the city, and the whole thing was taken apart and rebuilt up here in 1898. It was the first building in Prague framed in cast iron, and its terrace hangs out over the drop with the bridges lining up below.