World Wars, Communism and Liberation: A Prague Walking Tour

The 1900s in Prague were defined by extraordinary upheaval: Nazi occupation, Soviet tanks, and a peaceful revolution that brought it all to an end.

On this walking tour through the Old and New Towns, you’ll find out how totalitarianism, resistance, and an unlikely transformation shaped one of Europe’s most architecturally rich capitals.

The tour begins at Republic Square, where the Art Nouveau Municipal House marks the spot where Czechoslovakia declared independence in 1918. You’ll walk through Celetná Street into the Old Town Square, passing buildings that survived war and communist neglect. As you walk, you’ll find out how the city’s famous café culture was deliberately suppressed. I’ll tell you the story of František Stadler, whose fashion store was one of many private enterprises that was confiscated – first after the Nazi takeover, and later by the communist government.

Along the way, you’ll discover how the Iron Curtain isolated ordinary Czechs for four decades, and how the architecture around you reflects each era’s ideology.

You’ll make your way from the Old Town into the New Town, past the infamous Bartolomějská Street, home first to the Nazi Gestapo, then to the communist secret police. The tour ends at the statue of Saint Wenceslas, where playwright-turned-president Václav Havel addressed 200,000 people in the square.

On this 75-minute tour, you’ll have a chance to:

• Examine the House of the Black Madonna, the Cubist building where conservationists lost their battle to preserve medieval Celetná Street
• See ‘stumbling stones’ commemorating Holocaust victims, part of a network of nearly 500 memorials across the city
• Learn how 700 Jewish children were rescued from Prague by British broker Nicholas Winton in the months before World War II
• Discover Hotel Jalta, which contains a Cold War nuclear bunker built to shelter Communist Party officials, and is now open as a museum
• Encounter David Černý’s rotating Franz Kafka sculpture and his hanging Sigmund Freud – both playful tributes to Prague’s intellectual history
• Visit Lucerna Palace, built by Václav Havel’s grandfather and later seized by the communist regime
• Get a view of the National Museum, where a small cross marks the spot where student Jan Palach burned himself in protest against the Soviet occupation
• Make your way along Národní Street, where a student march in November 1989 unexpectedly ignited the Velvet Revolution

By the end of this tour, you’ll have a sense of the unlikely transformation that shaped one of Europe’s most architecturally rich capitals.