Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Nové Město, Prague's New Town, was certainly new when founded in 1348 by
Emperor Charles IV to link the Old Town with Vyšehrad. Three times bigger than
the Old Town, it lacks the crooked web of lanes and thoroughfares of its older neigh-
bours,butitsmedievaloriginsarestillmuchinevidence,despitemanynineteenth-and
twentieth-century alterations and additions. The Nové Město is where you'll find many
ofPrague'sbighotels,cinemas,nightclubs,fast-foodoutletsanddepartmentstores,and
hasamuchmorelived-infeelthanotherpartsofthehistoricalcentre.Thisismostevid-
entonthequarter'smainsquare,theelongatedVáclavskénáměstí(WenceslasSquare),
which has provided the backdrop for many pivotal moments in Czech history.
Large market squares, wide streets and a level of town planning far ahead of its time were
employed by Charles IV to transform Prague into the new capital city of the Holy Roman
Empire. However, Nové Město was incomplete when Charles died, and quickly became the
city's poorest quarter after Josefov, fertile ground for Hussites and radicals throughout the
centuries.
In the second half of the nineteenth century the authorities set about a campaign of slum
clearance similar to that inflicted on the Jewish quarter; only the churches and a few import-
ant historical buildings were left standing, but Charles's street layout survives pretty much
intact. The leading architects of the day began to line the
wide boulevards
with ostentatious
examples of their work, which were eagerly snapped up by the new class of status-conscious
businessman - a process that has continued into this century, making Nové Město the most
architecturally varied area in Prague.
The obvious starting point is
Wenceslas Square
(Václavské náměstí), hub of the modern
city, and somewhere you will inevitably pass through again and again. The two principal,
partially pedestrianized streets that lead off it are
Na příkopě
and 28 října, which becomes
Národní třída
. These streets together form the
zlatý kříž
or “golden cross”, Prague's com-
mercial axis and for over a century the most expensive slice of real estate in the capital. The
zlatý kříž
and the surrounding streets also contain some of Prague's finest late nineteenth-
century, Art Nouveau and early twentieth-century architecture.
The rest of Nové Město, which spreads out northeast and southwest of Wenceslas Square,
is much less explored, and for the most part still heavily residential. A few specific sights
are worth singling out for attention - the museum devoted to
Dvořák
on Ke Karlovu, the
Mánes
art gallery on the waterfront, and the memorial to the Czechoslovak parachutists off
Karlovo náměstí, for example - but the rest is decidedly less exciting than all that's gone be-
fore. However, if your ultimate destination is Vyšehrad, you can easily take in some of the
more enjoyable bits of southern Nové Město en route.
