Charles Bridge

Where it sits. Charles Bridge crosses the Vltava on a shallow curve between Křižovnické náměstí in Prague's Old Town and Mostecká street in Malá Strana, 516 metres of sandstone carried on sixteen arches and standing just under ten metres wide. It is the hinge of the whole city: the Old Town Bridge Tower closes the eastern end, the two Lesser Town towers the western, and the walk between them delivers the postcard everyone comes for, with Prague Castle and St Vitus Cathedral stacked on the ridge to the northwest. Below the northern parapet the river splits around Kampa island; below the southern one, rowing boats and pleasure craft work the slack water. Because the deck runs roughly east to west, the light does something different at each end of the day — flat and pink on the castle at sunrise, hard against the towers at noon, and gold along the statue line an hour before sunset.

The story behind it. Construction began under Charles IV in 1357, replacing the Judith Bridge of 1158–1172, which a flood had wrecked in 1342. Czech tradition holds that the emperor, a committed numerologist, laid the first stone at 5:31am on 9 July 1357, producing the palindrome 1357 9/7 5:31. Work finished around 1402. Until 1841 it was the only crossing of the Vltava in Prague, which made it the commercial artery between eastern and western Europe and part of the coronation route of the Bohemian kings. It has also absorbed a great deal of history: in 1621 the severed heads of leaders of the anti-Habsburg revolt were displayed on the Old Town tower after the Old Town Square executions, and in 1648 the heaviest fighting of the Swedish assault on Prague happened on the deck itself, stripping the tower's river-facing Gothic sculpture. The catastrophic flood of September 1890 tore out three arches and dropped two Brokoff statues into the water; repairs cost 665,000 crowns and the bridge reopened on 19 November 1892.

On screen. Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible (1996) is the reason a generation of visitors recognises this parapet before they ever stand on it. De Palma talked Tom Cruise into setting the entire first act in Prague — a city Hollywood barely used at the time — and the unit shot here between March and August 1995, working across Charles Bridge, Old Town Square and the National Museum. The bridge carries the sequence in which Jim Phelps is shot and goes over the side into the river while Ethan Hunt watches, helpless, from the deck. Miloš Forman had already used the surrounding streets for Amadeus (1984), standing in for eighteenth-century Vienna, and the bridge has since become the default establishing shot for any production that wants "old Europe" in three seconds. A practical note for location hunters: the film crews shoot it empty at dawn, which is not what daytime visitors encounter.

What you actually see today. The 30 statues and statuary groups lining the balustrade were installed largely between 1683 and 1714 and are now all copies, the originals having been moved to the Lapidarium of the National Museum to escape acid air and river damp. The bronze St John of Nepomuk of 1683 is the oldest and the busiest — the relief panel below it has been rubbed to a mirror by hands seeking luck, and it marks the spot where the priest was reportedly thrown into the river in 1393. Matthias Braun's St Luitgard of 1710 is the finest piece of carving on the bridge; Ferdinand Brokoff's group of a turbaned jailer with a dog, guarding Christian prisoners in a cell, is the strangest. Look for the gilded Hebrew inscription on the crucifix, added in 1696 as a punishment levied on a Jewish man accused of blasphemy, and for the plaque that now explains it. Beneath the arches, the piers still carry medieval ice guards.

Getting there and timing. Metro line A to Staroměstská puts you two minutes from the eastern end; tram 22 to Malostranské náměstí drops you at the western. The bridge is pedestrian-only and free, open around the clock. Between roughly nine in the morning and eight in the evening it is one of the densest tourist spaces in central Europe, and portrait painters, jazz bands and pickpockets all work the crowd. Arrive before seven, or come back after ten at night, and the same 516 metres become almost empty. Both bridge towers can be climbed for a fee, and the Old Town Bridge Tower gives the cleanest line down the length of the deck. The bridge entered a twenty-year programme of structural inspection and repair in late 2019, so short sections are periodically fenced; the crossing itself stays open.