Wenceslas Square

Landmark · New Town (Nové Město)Prague,Czechia

A 750-metre sloping boulevard in Prague, laid out as a horse market in 1348, where Czechs gathered in 1918, 1968 and 1989.

Wenceslas Square is 750 metres of slope running up from the Old Town to the National Museum, and it works as a boulevard: traffic down both flanks, a wide walking strip through the middle. At the top, on a horse, is St Wenceslas, cast by Josef Václav Myslbek and finished in 1912. The buildings along both sides 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 come whenever something was about to change. The republic was declared here in 1918, the tanks came in 1968, and in 1989 a crowd filled the whole slope and shook its keys at the balcony. Look for the bronze cross set into the pavement above the statue — it marks where Jan Palach set himself alight two months after the tanks, and a second student did the same a month after him. Today the slope is sausage stands, department stores and neon, and it takes some effort to see it as any of the rest.

Worth knowing

HistoryA horse market, six centuries before the crowds

Charles IV laid this ground out as a horse market in 1348, long before it became the place a country came to stand when something was ending.

Good to know

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.