Žižkov Television Tower

Viewpoint · ŽižkovPrague,Czechia

The tallest structure in Czechia, 216 metres of steel and concrete with ten faceless babies crawling up it, built over a former Jewish burial ground.

The Žižkov Television Tower is 216 metres of dark steel and concrete standing in the middle of a residential district, with ten faceless babies crawling up its legs. It is the tallest structure in the country, and the observation deck at 93 metres looks out over blocks of flats rather than over the historic centre. That is part of what makes it worth the ride: from up here the old town is a thing you look at whole, from outside. Work started in October 1985 and the transmitter went into service in February 1992, so a tower drawn under one political system was switched on under another. Václav Aulický designed it and Jiří Kozák engineered it, and the result has been argued over ever since. The objection has never really been about how it looks: the ground it stands on had been a Jewish burial ground, and Prague has not let that go. Before you go up, walk round the base in the park. You get both things in one view from down there, the transmitter and the site it was put on.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The old town is a thin band, not the subject — Most of what the deck shows is a working residential district, so anyone coming for the historic centre will be disappointed.
Only go up on a clear day — The value is distance, with a horizon that can run a hundred kilometres; in haze you are paying to look at a grey lid.
Evening is the better half of the day — The district below turns into lit blocks and the castle floods, which suits a view about a whole city rather than monuments.

Things to do

1
Look at Prague from the wrong side
From the deck, find the castle and the river first — they sit as a narrow band on one edge of the window. Everything else is the city people actually live in: tenement blocks, tram lines, a green ridge. This is the one high viewpoint that does not flatter the centre, and that is precisely what it is for.
2
Walk into what is left of the cemetery
At the foot of the tower, find the walled enclosure in the park and go inside it. It is a small quiet rectangle of leaning stones, and the three concrete legs rise directly above the wall. Standing in there does more to explain the site than anything written on a panel ninety metres up.
3
Count the babies from the grass
Lie back on the park lawn and work along the three legs. Ten figures crawl up and down them at different heights, faces blank. From directly underneath the legs hide one another and the count goes wrong; from a hundred metres out on the grass you get the whole set at once.