Vyšehrad

Historic · VyšehradPrague, Czechia

Vyšehrad sits on a bluff where the Vltava turns, and Czech legend puts the city's beginning here: Princess Libuše, standing on this rock, is said to have seen a settlement whose fame would touch the stars. The archaeology is less romantic — the castle here is tenth-century, some seventy years younger than the one across the river — but from 1061 until 1140 it was the Přemyslid seat, and Vratislav II, crowned Bohemia's first king in 1085, ruled from here. It was rebuilt as a Baroque citadel in the seventeenth century, and the brick ramparts and gates you walk through today are that fortress rather than the medieval one. Inside the walls it is now a park. The twin neo-Gothic spires of the basilica of Saints Peter and Paul rise over it, and beside them lies the Vyšehrad cemetery, where Dvořák, Smetana, Mucha and Karel Čapek are buried around the Slavín vault. The small Rotunda of St Martin, eleventh-century and round, is one of the oldest buildings standing in Prague. The walk around the ramparts opens the whole river bend, and locals treat the grass as a lawn.

Worth knowing

Good to know

This is the quiet castle — it fills with families, joggers and prams rather than tour groups, and nobody up here is being moved along.
Walk the western ramparts — the wall above the river gives the bend downstream, the Dancing House and the castle in one sweep, while the south side looks upstream to Podolí.
The original bridge statues are down in the casemates — several of the Baroque saints taken off Charles Bridge are stored in the tunnels under the fortress, out of the weather.
Late afternoon empties it — the light comes across the river onto the walls, the picnics thin out, and the cemetery closes its gates before the ramparts do.

Things to do

1
Circle the ramparts
Start at the Táborská gate and follow the wall round. The path runs along the top of the brick bastions, and on the western side the river bend opens: bridges, the castle on its ridge, and the New Town embankment below you.
2
Walk the cemetery rows
The graves here are small works of sculpture rather than headstones, and the names are the ones on Prague's concert programmes and street signs. Dvořák's is under the arcade near the Slavín vault, and Mucha lies inside the vault itself.
3
Sit on the wall above the bend
The southern rampart has a long stretch of low wall with the river directly beneath it. In the late afternoon it fills up with people doing nothing in particular, and the rowing boats come past underneath in ones and twos.