◆ Country guide · Central Europe

Top 10s across Czechia

Bohemia and Moravia in one small landlocked country: a capital nobody bombed flat, castles at the end of most branch lines, and the highest beer consumption per head in the world.

City guides

10,915,839

People

Video guide

UNESCO sites

Live destination map

AllPrague and central BohemiaWest Bohemia and the spasSouth BohemiaNorth and east BohemiaMoravia and Silesia

By Wimup Editorial Updated August 2026 12 min read

Best months

May · Jun · Sep

Ideal length

7–10 days

Budget / day

€60–130

Language

Czech

Getting around

Trains, trams and the Prague metro

Region ▾Theme ▾Budget ▾Best month ▾Trip length ▾ 3 guides

Grid Map

Quick answer · where to go in Czechia

Give Prague three or four nights, then get on a train. The capital puts Kutná Hora and its bone chapel, the castle at Karlštejn and the fortress town of Terezín inside a morning, so day trips cost you no hotel change. After that pick a direction. South: Český Krumlov for the river loop and the painted tower, with České Budějovice and the Budvar brewery on the way. West: the spa colonnades of Karlovy Vary and Mariánské Lázně, and Plzeň, where pale lager was invented in 1842. East into Moravia, which behaves like a different country: Brno for functionalist architecture and a student city’s bars, Olomouc for the finest square nobody queues in, Mikulov for wine. May, June and September are the months to aim at.

All regions Prague and central Bohemia West Bohemia and the spas South Bohemia North and east Bohemia Moravia and Silesia

Jump to City guides Fun fact Stereotypes Famous Czechs Food FAQ

3 Czechia city guides

Sorted by what travelers are saving this month.

Fun fact

One number worth knowing

Czechia has topped the world table for beer drunk per person for more than thirty consecutive years. The Czech Beer and Malt Association put 2025 at about 121 litres a head, a record low by Czech standards and still comfortably first, and the pale lager most of the world drinks is named after Plzeň.

Stereotypes, sorted out

The clichés you have heard, what is actually true, and how to fit in.

""Czechia" is a nickname somebody invented"

The realityIt is the country's official short name, the exact equivalent of Česko in Czech, and the government asked the UN to enter it in the UNTERM and UNGEGN name databases in 2016. The Czech Republic remains the formal political name and is used on official occasions. Both are correct, which is why the foreign ministry itself publishes a page on when to use which.

"It is Eastern Europe"

The realityCentral Europe, and the map is blunt about it: Prague sits at 14.4 degrees east, roughly two degrees west of Vienna. The country borders Germany and Austria along most of its edge, it was one of the industrial heartlands of the Habsburg empire, and the architecture is Gothic, Baroque and functionalist rather than anything Soviet planners built.

"Prague is the country"

The realityPrague is one city in a country of ten and a half million people, and the half of it east of the Bohemian highlands is Moravia, with its own dialects, its own wine culture and no interest in being a suburb of the capital. Brno is a student city with a functionalist skyline and a UNESCO-listed villa, Olomouc has the finer main square, and the spa towns in the west are a different world again.

"Trdelník is a traditional Czech pastry"

The realityIt is a spit cake with Hungarian and Transylvanian roots and a long tradition in Skalica, just over the Slovak border. It reached Prague's street stalls in the early 2000s as tourist food, and no Czech cookbook printed before then carries it. It is pleasant enough hot. It just is not the national pastry the queue implies.

"Czech is basically Russian"

The realityBoth are Slavic and that is where it stops. Czech is West Slavic, closest to Slovak and Polish, written in the Latin alphabet with the háček and the acute accent that Jan Hus's spelling reform introduced. Assuming otherwise lands badly with anyone who remembers 1968, so it is worth not assuming.

A half-litre of pale lager under a finger of foam, and an argument about the correct pourThe crowd assembling under the astronomical clock four minutes before the hourA castle on the ridge above every second villageDumplings, sliced, laid alongside the sauce rather than under itKafka's face on a mug, a magnet and a fridge full of T-shirtsTwo defenestrations, and the joke about a thirdKrtek the little mole, on children's pyjamas since 1957

Cultural notes that actually help

Say dobrý den entering a shop, a lift or a doctor's waiting room, and na shledanou leaving. Skipping it reads as rude in a way that no amount of politeness afterwards repairs.
Toast with eye contact, say na zdraví, touch glasses with everyone at the table and do not cross arms doing it. Then put the glass down before you drink.
The pub keeps your tab on a paper slip under the beer mat, and a fresh beer arrives the moment yours is empty. Put the mat on top of the glass when you want the run to stop.
Validate every tram, bus and metro ticket in the yellow machine as you board. Inspectors are plain-clothed, they are not sympathetic, and the fine is collected on the spot.
Take your shoes off inside a Czech home. Slippers will be produced, and refusing them is the odd move, not accepting them.
Change money at a bank or a bank's own ATM, never at a street exchange booth, and always decline the screen offering to charge you in your home currency.
Voices stay low on public transport and in restaurants, and the seat near the door belongs to whoever needs it more than you do.

Famous Czech faces

The names behind Czech music, sport, writing, screen, art, science and public life. Pick a field.

Václav Havel

Playwright and dissident who became the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first of the Czech Republic

Franz Kafka

Prague-born author of The Trial and The Metamorphosis, who wrote in German and worked in insurance

Antonín Dvořák

Composer of the New World Symphony and the Slavonic Dances

Milan Kundera

Novelist of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, who wrote his later work in French

Alfons Mucha

The poster artist who defined Art Nouveau, and painter of the twenty canvases of the Slav Epic

Emil Zátopek

Won the 5,000 m, the 10,000 m and the marathon at the 1952 Olympics, the marathon being his first

Martina Navrátilová

Eighteen Grand Slam singles titles, and one of the most complete records in tennis

Miloš Forman

Director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus, which was filmed in Prague

Bedřich Smetana

Composer of Má vlast, whose second movement follows the Vltava from its source to Prague

Leoš Janáček

Moravian composer of Jenůfa and The Cunning Little Vixen, who built melodies out of speech

Bohuslav Martinů

Prolific twentieth-century composer who spent most of his career in exile

Rafael Kubelík

Conductor who left in 1948 and returned in 1990 to open the Prague Spring festival

Ema Destinnová

Soprano of the Metropolitan Opera's golden age, and the face on the old 2,000 koruna note

Karel Gott

The pop voice of Czech television for half a century, and a household name in Germany too

Věra Čáslavská

Gymnast with seven Olympic golds, who turned her head away during the Soviet anthem in 1968

Ivan Lendl

Eight Grand Slam singles titles and the training regime that changed how tennis is played

Jaromír Jágr

Second on the NHL's all-time scoring list, and still playing professionally in his fifties

Dominik Hašek

Goaltender who won consecutive Hart Trophies and the 1998 Olympic gold in Nagano

Ester Ledecká

Won Olympic gold in both snowboarding and alpine skiing at the same 2018 Games

Barbora Krejčíková

French Open and Wimbledon singles champion, and a doubles career of similar weight

Jaroslav Hašek

Wrote The Good Soldier Švejk, the funniest and most subversive novel of the First World War

Karel Čapek

Playwright of R.U.R., the 1920 play that gave every language the word robot

Bohumil Hrabal

Novelist of Closely Watched Trains and Too Loud a Solitude, and a fixture of Prague's pubs

Jaroslav Seifert

Poet, and the only Czech writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

Jiří Menzel

Director whose Closely Watched Trains won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film

Jan Švankmajer

Surrealist animator whose stop-motion films influenced a generation of directors

Karel Zeman

Special-effects pioneer who built whole worlds out of engravings and glass

Zdeněk Miler

Animator who created Krtek, the little mole, and drew him for half a century

Josef Sudek

Photographer of Prague, who worked with one arm and a large-format camera

František Kupka

Painter, and one of the first artists anywhere to exhibit purely abstract work

Jan Kaplický

Architect behind Future Systems, whose designs include the Selfridges building in Birmingham

Eva Jiřičná

Architect and designer known for glass and steel staircases, working out of London and Prague

Gregor Mendel

Ran the pea experiments that founded genetics, in the garden of a Brno monastery

Jaroslav Heyrovský

Won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for polarography, the analytical method he invented

Otto Wichterle

Chemist who invented the soft contact lens, prototyping it on a machine built from a bicycle kit

Antonín Holý

Chemist whose compounds became the antiviral drugs used against HIV and hepatitis B

Sigmund Freud

Born in Příbor in Moravia, and the founder of psychoanalysis

Charles IV

Holy Roman Emperor and king of Bohemia, who made Prague an imperial capital and founded its university

Jan Hus

Reformer burned at the stake in 1415, a century before Luther, and the reason Czech spelling uses the háček

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Philosopher and founding president of Czechoslovakia in 1918

Milada Horáková

Politician and resistance member executed after a 1950 show trial, and now a national memorial day

Jan Palach

Student who set himself alight in Wenceslas Square in 1969, in protest at the Soviet occupation

Must-try Czech food

The Sunday plate, the pub counter, the dumplings and the beer. Pick a category.

Svíčková na smetaně

Beef in a sieved root-vegetable cream sauce, with bread dumplings, cranberry and a spoon of whipped cream. The Sunday plate, and the one to judge a kitchen by.

Vepřo knedlo zelo

Roast pork, dumplings and stewed cabbage. If Czechia has a national dish, this is the one people name.

Guláš

Beef goulash, darker and less paprika-forward than the Hungarian original, served with dumplings and raw onion.

Rajská omáčka

Sweet tomato sauce over boiled beef and dumplings. A school-canteen dish nobody grows out of.

Koprová omáčka

Dill cream sauce with beef, boiled egg and potatoes. Divisive, and worth trying anyway.

Kuře na paprice

Chicken braised in paprika cream, the weekday cousin of the goulash.

Pečená kachna

Roast duck with red cabbage and potato dumplings, the autumn and Christmas plate.

Kulajda

Creamy dill and mushroom soup with a poached egg in it. South Bohemian, and the best soup in the country.

Česnečka

Garlic broth with croutons and cheese, ordered the morning after by everyone who needs it.

Bramboračka

Potato soup with wild mushrooms and marjoram, often served in a hollowed loaf.

Hovězí vývar

Clear beef broth with liver dumplings and noodles. The starter that arrives before everything.

Houskový knedlík

The bread dumpling, steamed and sliced. It is cutlery as much as a side: the sauce is the point and this collects it.

Bramborový knedlík

The potato dumpling, denser and greyer, the one that comes with duck and smoked meat.

Bramborák

Potato pancake fried with garlic and marjoram, sold from hatches at markets.

Dušené zelí

Cabbage stewed with caraway and a little sugar, red or white depending on the meat.

Smažený sýr

A slab of Edam crumbed and deep fried, with tartar sauce and chips. Student food, and everywhere.

Utopenec

Sausage pickled with onion in vinegar, literally "the drowned man". A jar on the bar, eaten with dark bread.

Nakládaný hermelín

Soft white cheese marinated in oil with garlic, chilli and peppercorns. The other jar on the bar.

Řízek

Breaded pork or chicken schnitzel with potato salad, and half of the Christmas Eve dinner.

Chlebíčky

Open sandwiches built on potato salad, from a lahůdky delicatessen counter. Lunch standing up.

Klobása

Grilled sausage with mustard and a slice of rye, the market and beer-garden standard.

Ovocné knedlíky

Fruit dumplings under quark, melted butter and sugar. Eaten as a main course, not a dessert.

Medovník

Layered honey cake with sour cream between the sheets. The cake in every café window.

Větrník

A choux ring filled with caramel and vanilla cream. The pastry Czechs argue about ranking.

Koláče

Round yeast pastries with poppy seed, quark or plum jam. Moravian weddings run on them.

Trdelník

The chimney cake on every Prague corner. Hungarian and Slovak in origin, sold here since the 2000s, and not the Czech tradition the queue suggests.

Pilsner-style lager

The pale lager invented in Plzeň in 1842 and copied by the world. Order it by degree: a 10 is lighter, a 12 fuller.

Nefiltrované pivo

Unfiltered, unpasteurised beer poured from a tank. Cloudier, softer, and the reason to drink near a brewery.

Becherovka

Herbal bitter from Karlovy Vary, drunk cold as a digestif or long with tonic.

Slivovice

Plum brandy from Moravia, frequently homemade, and offered at a strength that assumes you are staying.

Moravian white wine

Veltlínské zelené and Ryzlink from the vineyards around Mikulov and Znojmo, mostly drunk before it leaves the country.

Kofola

A herbal cola developed in the 1960s, still on tap in pubs, and the one soft drink with genuine local loyalty.

Svařák

Mulled wine, the fuel of every Advent market and every winter castle courtyard.

Czechia travel FAQ

How many days do you need in Czechia?+

A week is the honest minimum for more than the capital. Three or four nights in Prague covers the castle, the old town and one day trip, and the rest of the week buys either the south (Český Krumlov and České Budějovice) or Moravia (Brno, Olomouc and the wine country around Mikulov). Ten days lets you do both without moving hotels every night, because the trains are quick enough to make a base work.

Is Prague enough, or should you leave the city?+

Prague is genuinely one of the great European cities and it will hold you for three days. It is also the most crowded and most expensive place in the country by a wide margin. An hour on a train buys a different price level and a different atmosphere: Kutná Hora for the bone chapel and the silver-mining town around it, Plzeň for the brewery that named a beer style, Terezín for the fortress the Nazis turned into a ghetto. Leave for at least one of them.

Does Czechia use the euro?+

No. Czechia is an EU member but has kept its own currency, the Czech koruna, and there is no adoption date. Prices in euros in a shop window are a tourist-district signal rather than a convenience. Pay by card or take koruna from a bank ATM, decline the offer to be charged in your home currency, and avoid the exchange booths in the centre of Prague.

What is the best time to visit?+

May, June and September. The castles are open, the beer gardens are working, and the crowds are thinner than in July and August, when Prague and Český Krumlov fill up. December is its own case: the Advent markets are the reason to come and the reason the hotels cost double. November to March is cold, grey and cheap, with most of the country's castles closed.

How do you get around without a car?+

By train, mostly. The network is dense, fares are low and the intercity services out of Prague are comfortable, with České dráhy on most routes and RegioJet and Leo Express competing east to Ostrava. Coaches are the better answer where the railway takes a long way round, which is the case for Karlovy Vary and Český Krumlov. In the cities, trams and the Prague metro cover everything and the ticket must be validated as you board.

Is Czechia expensive?+

Not by Western European standards, but Prague's old town no longer counts as cheap. The gap between the tourist streets and everywhere else is the biggest in the country: a beer on the Old Town Square and the same beer two tram stops away are different products at different prices. Outside Prague, restaurant meals, museum entry and rooms all drop sharply, which is another argument for spending part of the week elsewhere.

Know before you go

The essentials for planning a Czech trip, including the ones nobody warns you about.

Currency

Czech koruna (CZK)

Czechia is in the European Union and has not adopted the euro, so the koruna is what you spend. Cards work almost everywhere, including on trams and in village pubs, and an ATM attached to a bank gives the honest rate. Two things cost tourists money here: the exchange booths around Wenceslas Square, and the machine asking whether you would like to be charged in your own currency. Decline that and pay in koruna.

Language

Czech

Czech is West Slavic and hard, and nobody expects you to speak it. English is standard in Prague and among younger Czechs everywhere; German is common near the Austrian and Bavarian borders. Two words carry a whole trip: dobrý den on the way in, děkuji on the way out.

Power

230V · 50Hz · Type C/E

Sockets take the round-pin European plug with an earthing pin protruding from the wall, the French type E. A two-pin type C plug fits, a UK or US plug does not, and an adapter is the only thing most visitors need.

Emergency

112 · 155 ambulance · 158 police

112 reaches everything and is answered in English. The direct numbers are 155 for the ambulance, 158 for the police, 150 for the fire brigade and 156 for the municipal police. EU health cards are accepted at state facilities; everyone else should carry travel insurance.

Visa

Schengen rules, 90 days in any 180

Czechia is in the Schengen area, so most Western passports enter without a visa for up to 90 days in any 180. Since April 2026 the EU Entry/Exit System registers non-EU visitors biometrically at the border, which means fingerprints and a photo on the first crossing and longer queues while it beds in. ETIAS, the paid travel authorisation, had not launched at the time of writing and the EU has said it will announce the date well in advance. The foreign ministry publishes the current rules itself.

Getting around

Trains, and intercity coaches

The rail network is dense, cheap and the reason a single base works: České dráhy runs most of it and the private operators RegioJet and Leo Express compete on the Prague to Ostrava line. Coaches are faster to the towns the railway loops around, including Karlovy Vary and Český Krumlov. Book the popular runs a day or two ahead in summer and reserve a seat.

City transport

Buy the ticket, then validate it

Trams, buses and the Prague metro run on one integrated ticket sold by time rather than distance, and a ticket is worthless until you stamp it in the yellow machine as you board. Inspectors are in plain clothes, they do check, and the fine is payable on the spot. Contactless payment straight to the card reader works in Prague and Brno and saves the whole question.

Tipping

Round up, or about 10 percent

Service is not on the bill. Round up in a pub, leave about a tenth in a restaurant, and say the total you want to pay as you hand over the money rather than leaving coins on the table. Nobody chases you for it.

Tap water

Drinkable everywhere

Czech tap water is safe across the country and good in Prague, so the bottled stuff is a habit rather than a necessity. Ask for a jug in a restaurant and expect to be charged for a bottle instead; that is normal here, not a scam.

Driving

Zero tolerance for alcohol

The legal blood alcohol limit for drivers is zero, and has been since 1953. One beer is an offence, and the police test freely. Motorways need an electronic vignette bought online or at a petrol station before you join one.

Castle season

April to early November

The state castles and chateaux run a season rather than opening year round: the National Heritage Institute unlocks about a hundred of them in early April and closes most in early November, and Monday is the standard closing day inside the season. Interiors are visited on a guided tour, so check the last tour time rather than the closing time, and book ahead for Karlštejn and Český Krumlov in summer.

When to visit Czechia

A short warm season, a long grey one, and an Advent month that prices itself accordingly.

Full month guide →

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Best: May, June and September, warm days with every castle open Peak: July and August, and the Advent market weeks in December Good: April and October, cool and quiet at either end of the season Off: November to March, grey and cold, with most castles shut

Czechia on Wimup Videos

Films to watch before you book.

YouTube ↗

3:49:28

Prague on Foot

Planning a Czech trip?

One fully-researched destination (ranked, mapped and paired with video) in your inbox every Thursday.