Vyšehrad

Historic · VyšehradPrague,Czechia

A walled bluff over the Vltava bend in Prague, a tenth-century royal seat now given to ramparts, a national cemetery and grass the neighbourhood uses.

Vyšehrad is a bluff where the Vltava turns, walled, and now mostly a park. You walk in through brick gates and come out on ramparts that open the whole river bend, with the city on one side and the water below on the other. Inside the walls are the twin neo-Gothic spires of the basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, the national cemetery beside them, and the Rotunda of St Martin, eleventh-century and round, one of the oldest buildings standing in Prague. Czech legend puts the city's beginning on this rock: Princess Libuše, standing here, is said to have seen a settlement whose fame would touch the stars. The archaeology is less romantic, and the castle here is tenth-century, some seventy years younger than the one across the river. From 1061 to 1140 it was the Přemyslid seat, and Vratislav II, crowned Bohemia's first king in 1085, ruled from it. The gates and ramparts you walk are seventeenth-century, from its rebuilding as a Baroque citadel. 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. Come round to the southern rampart and the wall drops low, with the water directly beneath and rowing boats passing underneath in ones and twos.
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
Find the small round church
The Rotunda of St Martin is a plain round chapel with a cone roof standing on its own in the grass, and it is one of the oldest buildings left anywhere in Prague. It takes a minute to walk round the outside. Nothing else inside these walls is this old, and nothing else is this undecorated.