Museum · Holešovice
National Gallery: Trade Fair Palace
A functionalist exhibition palace of 1928 holding Czech and European modern art: Kupka, Klimt, Schiele, Picasso.
Look for: František Kupka's early abstractions.
Closed Mondays
Go further, look closer.
Cities · Europe · 50°05′N 14°25′E
Prague
A city that survived the 20th century almost intact, so that Gothic, Baroque, Art Nouveau and the only Cubist architecture in the world sit side by side.
Best monthsApril–June and September–October
Art calendarPrague Gallery Weekend · Designblok (October)
This guide4 essentials · 6 places off-piste
Essentials
Museum · Old Town
Convent of Saint Agnes
Medieval art of Bohemia and Central Europe in a 13th-century convent, founded by a princess who became a saint.
Look for: Master Theodoric's heavy-faced saints, painted for Charles IV's castle at Karlštejn.
Closed Mondays
Library · Hradčany
Strahov Monastery Library
Two Baroque library halls, Theological and Philosophical, with painted ceilings and walnut shelves. You see them from the doorway.
Look for: The cabinet of curiosities in the corridor: a dodo, and a stuffed narwhal.
Daily
Museum · New Town
Mucha Museum
Alphonse Mucha's posters and paintings, from the Sarah Bernhardt posters that made him famous in Paris to the patriotic work of his return home.
Look for: The photographs he took of models in his Paris studio.
Daily
Off the list
Off-Piste in Prague
Rooms, ruins and curiosities: the city's other museum.
Architecture · Old Town
House of the Black Madonna
Josef Gočár's department store of 1912, the first Cubist building in Prague. The Grand Café Orient on the first floor has been rebuilt as it was, down to the coat hooks.
The Cubist chandeliers in the café, and the staircase.
Stained glass · Prague Castle
Mucha's window, St Vitus Cathedral
Alphonse Mucha's stained-glass window of Saints Cyril and Methodius (1931).
Go in the afternoon, when the sun is behind it.
Cemetery · Vyšehrad
Vyšehrad Cemetery
The national cemetery on the rock above the Vltava: Dvořák, Smetana, Mucha, and some of the finest Art Nouveau tombs in Europe.
The Slavín pantheon, then the view from the walls.
Architecture · Žižkov
Žižkov Television Tower
A 216-metre space-age tower of 1992. In 2000 David Černý added giant faceless babies crawling up its sides.
Look from below, or have a drink in the pod.
Interior · Wenceslas Square
Lucerna Passage
An Art Nouveau arcade built by Václav Havel's grandfather. David Černý's Saint Wenceslas rides an upside-down dead horse under the dome.
The 1930s cinema, still running.
Architecture · Náměstí Republiky
Kotva
A 1975 department store made of hexagons, by Věra and Vladimír Machonin. It is one of the last great socialist modernist shops, now protected.
The hexagonal skylights from inside.
Nearby
Kutná Hora
The Sedlec Ossuary, decorated with human bones, an hour by train.
If you have one day
Strahov Library → walk down through the castle to St Vitus → lunch in the Old Town → the House of the Black Madonna → tram to the Trade Fair Palace.