Wenceslas Square

Landmark · New Town (Nové Město)Prague, Czechia

Wenceslas Square is a boulevard rather than a square: 750 metres of slope running up from the Old Town to the National Museum, laid out by Charles IV in 1348 as the horse market of his new town. The mounted statue at the top, finished by Josef Václav Myslbek in 1912, is St Wenceslas, the tenth-century duke who became patron of the Czech lands. The buildings behind it run through the last hundred and thirty years — neo-Renaissance, Art Nouveau, functionalist and a good deal of concrete — because this end of Prague kept rebuilding while the Old Town did not. This is where the country has gathered when something was about to change: the republic declared in 1918, the invasion of 1968, and in November 1989 a crowd that filled the whole slope and shook its keys. A bronze cross set into the pavement above the statue, by the museum fountain, marks where Jan Palach set himself alight in January 1969; Jan Zajíc did the same a month later. Today the slope is sausage stands, department stores and neon, with one tram line cutting across it halfway down, and at dusk the floodlit museum closes the view at the top.

Worth knowing

Good to know

It is under your feet, not on a wall — the memorial by the museum fountain is set flat into the paving, and most people cross it without once looking down.
The slope is a different street after dark — by day it is shops and trams; at night the lower half turns loud and touristy, and the upper third stays the better walk.
The exchange desks here are aimed at tourists — Czech law lets you cancel a currency exchange within three hours, so read the receipt before you walk away from the window.
Turn round at the top — from the museum steps the whole slope lines up as one falling perspective, which is invisible while you are walking up it.

Things to do

1
Walk the whole slope once
Start at the museum steps and go down. The buildings change decade by decade as you descend — neo-Renaissance, then Art Nouveau, then glass and concrete — and the crowd thickens until you are spat out at the bottom into the Old Town lanes.
2
Find the cross in the pavement
It is set into the stone above the statue, near the museum fountain, low and easy to miss, with a bronze relief and usually a few candles beside it. People stop, look for a moment, and move on. It is the quietest thing on the whole boulevard.
3
Duck into the Lucerna passage
The arcade halfway down the western side is a 1910s shopping passage built by Václav Havel's grandfather, with marble, a domed cinema and a music bar underneath. Look up in the atrium for the horse hanging from the roof.