Prague
Czechia's capital, the City of a Hundred Spires
Prague survived the twentieth century almost intact, and the reward is a fairy-tale skyline of Gothic towers, baroque domes, and red-tiled roofs spilling down to the Vltava River. The medieval Charles Bridge, lined with blackened statues, leads up to the largest ancient castle complex in the world, and the astronomical clock still draws crowds in the Old Town Square. Capital of the Czech Republic and long called the City of a Hundred Spires, Prague is a perfectly preserved heart of central Europe, home to over two million in its metro area.
The city is built on both banks of the Vltava River in the basin of Bohemia, spread across a series of hills that give Prague its dramatic perspectives, with elevations ranging from around 177 metres at the river to nearly 400 metres on the surrounding heights. The river curls through the center, crossed by historic bridges and overlooked by the castle on its promontory. A temperate continental climate brings cold winters and warm summers, and parks and vineyard-clad slopes climb the hills above the dense old quarters.
Prague Castle was begun around 880 by the Přemyslid princes, and the city grew into the capital of Bohemia and, under Charles IV in the fourteenth century, of the Holy Roman Empire — earning its founding boulevards, university, and bridge. It was a center of the Reformation, the Defenestrations, and later the 1968 Prague Spring and the 1989 Velvet Revolution. Since 1993 it has been capital of the independent Czech Republic, a thriving cultural and tourist destination at the crossroads of Europe.