The complete bridge shot
The only place where the statues of Charles Bridge line up with the castle behind — the photograph you cannot take from ground level.
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This one clearly: it looks down the full length of the bridge with the castle behind. The Lesser Town tower gives the opposite direction towards the Old Town — attractive, but less striking.
Yes, and it is the cheapest and quickest of Prague's towers. With time for one climb while in the Old Town, take this: twenty minutes buys you the most famous view in the city.
Narrow, yes, but the tower is small and holds few people, so queues are usually short. Avoid the hour right before closing in summer, when the sunset photographers gather.
After the Protestant nobles were defeated at the Battle of White Mountain, twenty-seven were executed on the Old Town Square in 1621, and the heads of several were displayed on this tower for years. The twenty-seven crosses in the square's pavement mark the same event.
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The Old Town Bridge Tower is the Gothic gate opening onto Charles Bridge from the Old Town side, built by Peter Parler — the same architect as St Vitus Cathedral — in the late 14th century. It was never merely defensive but a symbolic triumphal arch: the coronation procession of the kings of Bohemia passed beneath it, and its eastern face is carved with kings, saints and provincial coats of arms like a political statement in stone. It carries a harsher memory too: after the executions of 1621, the heads of several Protestant nobles were displayed on its façade for years, as a warning to everyone who passed. In 1648 the tower held against a Swedish assault at the end of the Thirty Years War, and its western face remains the plainer one because it was damaged in that fighting. From the top you get the definitive photograph of Charles Bridge: the span running away from you with its statues in a line, and the castle and cathedral behind. There is no lift — about 138 spiral steps — but the climb is short and the reward large. Go shortly before sunset and you have the bridge in golden light, from above the crowd rather than inside it.
The only place where the statues of Charles Bridge line up with the castle behind — the photograph you cannot take from ground level.
Kings, saints and the arms of the Bohemian lands cut into the stone — a full reading of 14th-century power.
A room inside the tower with a small exhibition on the bridge's history and construction — a pause halfway up.
From the gallery you see the Vltava bend, Mánes Bridge and the Rudolfinum — an angle absent from the usual Prague photographs.
Karlův most, east end, Old Town, Prague 1