Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
From Malostranská
From Malostranská metro station, most people take the steep short cut
up the Staré zámecké schody, which brings you into the castle from its rear end.
Zámecké schody
A better approach is further west, up the stately Zámecké schody, where
you can stop and admire the view before entering the castle via the main gates.
Malá Strana gardens
From April to October, you might consider coming up through Malá
Strana's wonderful
terraced gardens
, which are connected to the castle gardens (Palácové
zahrady).
By tram
The alternative to all this climbing is to take tram #22 from Malostranská metro,
whichtacklesthehairpinbendsofChotkovawithease,anddepositsyoueitheratthePražský
hrad stop outside the Královská zahrada (Royal Gardens) to the north of the castle, or, if you
prefer, at the Pohořelec stop outside the gates of the Strahovský klášter (monastery), at the
far western edge of Hradčany.
Pražský hrad (Prague Castle)
ViewedfromCharlesBridge,
PRAŽSKÝHRAD
(knowntotheCzechssimplyasthe
Hrad
)
stands aloof from the rest of the city, protected not by bastions and castellated towers, but by
a rather austere palatial facade - an “immense unbroken sheer blank wall”, as Hilaire Belloc
described it - above which rises the great (neo-)Gothic mass of St Vitus Cathedral. It's the
picture-postcard image of Prague, and is spectacularly lit up at night, though for the Czechs
the castle has been an object of disdain as much as admiration, its alternating fortunes mir-
roring the shifts in the nation's history. The golden age of Charles IV and Rudolf II and the
darkagesofthelaterHabsburgs,interwardemocracy andStalinist terror-allhaveemanated
from the Hrad. When the first posters appeared in December 1989 demanding “HAVEL NA
HRAD” (“Václav Havel to the Castle”), they weren't asking for his re-incarceration. Havel's
occupancy of the Hrad was the sign that the reins of government had finally been wrested
from the Communist regime.
