SIGHTS AND LANDMARKS OF PRAGUE

Prague was said to be the threshold between East and West, the city of alchemists and astronomers (Tycho Brahe is buried in the Church of Our Lady in front of the Tyn on the Old Town Square) under the Emperor Rudolf II and also the city of chess players. The first world chess champion Wilhelm Steinitz was born in Prague (a memorial plaque at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University reminds us of this fact), Prague hosted the chess Olympiad in 1931 and today the best Czech chess player David Navara lives here.

Go along the Royal Route where the coronation processions passed, from the Art Nouveau Municipal House, around the Astronomical Clock on the Old Town Square, across the Charles Bridge and then through Neruda Street up to the Castle. There, in the seat of Czech kings and now the Czech president, you will find a flying flag of the European Union, but you can also read interesting and provocative words of a chess fan and a former Czech president Vaclav Klaus about the single European currency and global warming.

A memorial plaque with a relief portrait of the first world champion in chess Wilhelm Steinitz (* 1836 Prague, † 1900 New York) is located on the side wall of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. Nearby, on the border of the Jewish Ghetto and the Old Town, in a blind alley Goldrichova, there used to be Steinitz´s native home.

The famous Old Town Astronomical Clock at Prague's Old Town Hall on the Old Town Square.

Cathedral of Saint Vitus is one of the finest Gothic cathedrals in Central Europe. Inside the cathedral, the Czech crown jewels are kept and locked away by seven locks.