Žižkov

Neighborhood · Žižkov (Prague 3)Prague,Czechia

A steep Prague hillside of 1880s tenements thrown up for people priced out of the centre, with a working pub on most corners.

Žižkov is a hillside of five-storey tenement blocks with a beer sign over most ground-floor doorways. The streets run straight up the slope, narrow, with courtyards behind the fronts, and the pubs in them are used by the people who live upstairs rather than by anyone who came for them. There is no monument at the centre of it and nothing to queue for. What you get is a quarter that has stayed itself while the centre below it has not. This was vineyards until Prague outgrew itself. Žižkov became a town in its own right in 1881, filled up with people who could not afford the centre, and was swallowed by Prague in 1922. Its own first mayor admitted the hillside was too steep for regular or attractive planning, and the blocks went up anyway, in a rush, along the contour. It takes its name from Jan Žižka, the Hussite commander, whose ridge closes the quarter on the north.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Walk between the monuments rather than to them — the hill, the tower and the cemetery all sit on this quarter's edges, and the streets in the middle are the part almost every visitor misses.
This is a quarter for the people who live in it — the pubs, bakeries and corner shops are not staged for visitors, and the correct way to use them is quietly and in ordinary clothes.
Look into the courtyards through open doorways — the tenements were built fast and deep, with back blocks behind the street fronts, which is how so many people were housed in twenty years.

Things to do

1
Climb one street from bottom to top
Pick a cross street and walk it uphill without turning off. The gradient does not let up, the blocks stay the same height the whole way, and every few doors there is a pub with the door open. The street plan went where the hill allowed rather than where anyone drew it, which is why the climb is harder than the map suggests.
2
Read one corner block from the pavement
Stop at one of the big corner buildings in the older grid and look at it properly. Five storeys, plaster ornament worked round the windows, shops at street level and flats above. It went up fast in the 1880s, and the ornament is most of what was spent on the outside. Every block on the hill is a variation on this one.