Czech Republic
Prague
Alchemists, golems, and a church decorated with 40,000 people.
Prague never quite left the Middle Ages. The old town is a knot of gothic spires and alchemists’ lanes, a bell-ringing skeleton runs the astronomical clock, and an hour east there is a church done up entirely in human bone.
It is small, walkable and cheap, so you can fit a properly macabre weekend in without ever getting in a car.
Go when Deep winter. Snow, spires, and a skeleton that rings a bell on the hour.
Haunt
What to See
Ossuaries, oddity museums, cemeteries and the properly strange.
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Sedlec Ossuary
A chapel where a half-blind monk arranged the bones of about 40,000 plague and war dead into a chandelier, a coat of arms and garlands of skulls. The most macabre room in Europe. Go early, it fills with coach tours by ten.
Best shot The bone chandelier in low light. Bring a tripod, the room is dim on purpose.
- Touristy
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Old Jewish Cemetery
Twelve thousand headstones crammed and layered up to twelve graves deep, because the community was banned from expanding. It looks like a frozen wave of leaning stone. Ticketed and busy, still worth it.
Best shot The stacked, leaning stones under bare winter branches. Quiet, so keep it that way.
- Touristy
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Speculum Alchemiae
An underground alchemy lab, hidden for centuries and found again after a flood, secret passages and all, once used by Rudolf II’s alchemists.
- Quiet
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Vyšehrad Cemetery
A hilltop graveyard next to a neo-gothic basilica where the famous Czech dead lie under art nouveau tombs. Far fewer tourists than the centre.
- Quiet
- Solo-friendly
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Museum of Alchemists and Magicians of Old Prague
A tiny museum in one of the oldest houses in the city, dressed up as an alchemist’s garret with dummies and dusty apparatus. The reviews run lukewarm and they are not wrong, it is small and a bit tourist-tat, but if you love the alchemy myth it is a cheap half hour.
- Touristy
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Church of the Holy Spirit
A quiet gothic church tucked behind the streets of the old Jewish quarter. Small, calm, rarely busy, a good place to sit down when the crowds get to you.
- Quiet
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Charles Bridge
The 14th-century stone bridge lined with thirty blackened baroque saints. Mobbed all day, but at dawn it is just you, the statues and the mist off the Vltava.
Best shot Before sunrise, when it is empty: thirty blackened baroque saints in the river fog.
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St Vitus Cathedral
The great gothic cathedral inside the castle walls, all soaring stone, gargoyles and a rose window. Inside, the Art Nouveau Mucha window is worth the climb up the hill.
Best shot The grotesques bristling off the flying buttresses, backlit in late afternoon.
Rest
Where to Stay
B&Bs, haunted old hotels, Victorian piles. No hostels, ever.
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Miss Sophie's Downtown
$$Exposed brick, dark rooms, a vaulted cellar to drink in. Moody without trying, and cheap.
- Solo-friendly
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The Emblem Hotel
$$$$Sleek and dim, with a hidden library bar and a rooftop over the spires. For when you want your gloom five-star.
- Quiet
- Adults only
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Hotel Neruda
$$$A medieval townhouse on the lane up to the castle, all beams and crooked stairs, named after the poet who lived on the street.
- Quiet
Feast
Where to Eat & Drink
Candlelit cellars, dark bars, rooms with history in the walls.
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Café Imperial
$$$A 1914 café tiled top to bottom in gilded art deco ceramic. Come for the room. The food is fine.
- Solo-friendly
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U Fleků
$$A brewery going since 1499, a maze of dark timbered halls pouring its own black lager. Ancient and gorgeous, and full of tour groups singing. Go anyway, sit in a back room.
- Touristy
- Party scene
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Kavárna Lucerna
$$A faded art nouveau café under David Černý’s sculpture of St Wenceslas riding a dead horse upside down. Order a coffee, look up.
- Solo-friendly
- Quiet
Nothing matches those filters. .