--- title: "Czechia travel guides, city by city | Wimup" description: "Czechia on Wimup: Top 10 city guides, when to visit, what to know before you go, and the food, faces and films worth knowing first." url: https://wimup.com/country/czechia type: Country guide updated: 2026-10-29 publisher: Wimup (https://wimup.com) --- # 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**. ## Quick answer Give **Prague** three or four nights, then take the train. **Kutná Hora**, **Karlštejn** and **Terezín** are day trips. Then pick a direction. South: **Český Krumlov**, with **České Budějovice** on the way. West: the spa towns of **Karlovy Vary** and **Mariánské Lázně**, and **Plzeň**, where pale lager was invented in 1842. East into Moravia: **Brno** for functionalist architecture, **Olomouc** for the finest square nobody queues in, **Mikulov** for wine. Aim for **May, June and September**. ## Quick facts - **Best months:** May · Jun · Sep - **Ideal length:** 7–10 days - **Budget per day:** €60–130 - **Language:** Czech - **Getting around:** Trains, trams and the Prague metro - **5** City guides - **10,915,839** People - **2** Video guides - **17** UNESCO sites Czechia is compact and the railway does the work, which is why a single base goes further here than in most of Europe. Prague sits almost in the middle of Bohemia and puts Kutná Hora, Karlštejn, Plzeň and Terezín inside a morning of it. South Bohemia carries the pond country and Český Krumlov, the north holds the sandstone towers of Bohemian Switzerland, and the west runs the spa triangle of Karlovy Vary, Mariánské Lázně and Františkovy Lázně. Moravia, the eastern half, is the wine half: Brno is the second city, the Lednice and Valtice estates are on the UNESCO list, and the vineyards around Mikulov behave nothing like the beer country to the west. ## 5 Czechia city guides 1. [Prague](https://wimup.com/city/prague.md): Europe · 10 picks 2. [Český Krumlov](https://wimup.com/city/cesky-krumlov.md): Europe · 10 picks 3. [Olomouc](https://wimup.com/city/olomouc.md): Europe · 10 picks 4. [Karlovy Vary](https://wimup.com/city/karlovy-vary.md): Europe · 10 picks 5. [Liberec](https://wimup.com/city/liberec.md): Europe · 10 picks ## Know before you go - **Population:** 10,915,839 - **Area:** 78,871 km² - **Density:** 138.4 / km² - **Capital:** Prague - **Major cities:** Prague, Brno, Ostrava, Plzeň, Liberec - **Tourism board:** Official site - **Currency:** Czech koruna (CZK) EU member, no euro: you spend koruna. Cards work almost everywhere, trams and village pubs included. Avoid the Wenceslas Square exchange booths, and decline any offer to charge in your currency. - **Language:** Czech Czech is West Slavic and hard, and nobody expects you to speak it. English is standard in Prague and among the young, German near the borders. Say dobrý den on the way in, děkuji on the way out. - **Calling code:** +420 - **Power:** 230V · 50Hz · Type C/E Sockets take the round-pin European plug with an earthing pin, type E. A type C plug fits, UK and US plugs do not, so bring an adapter. - **Emergency:** 112 · 155 ambulance · 158 police 112 reaches everything, in English. Direct lines: 155 ambulance, 158 police, 150 fire, 156 municipal police. EU health cards work at state facilities. Everyone else needs insurance. - **Visa:** Schengen rules, 90 days in any 180 Schengen: most Western passports get 90 days in any 180. Since April 2026 the Entry/Exit System takes fingerprints and a photo on first crossing, so expect queues. ETIAS has not launched yet. - **Getting around:** Trains, and intercity coaches The rail network is dense and cheap, so one base works. České dráhy runs most of it, with RegioJet and Leo Express to Ostrava. Coaches are faster to Karlovy Vary and Český Krumlov. Book summer seats. - **City transport:** Buy the ticket, then validate it One ticket, sold by time, covers trams, buses and the Prague metro, and it counts only once stamped in the yellow machine. Fines are paid on the spot. Contactless works in Prague and Brno. - **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 as you pay. Do not leave coins on the table. - **Tap water:** Drinkable everywhere Safe across the country and good in Prague. Ask for a jug and you may be charged for a bottle instead. That is normal here. - **Driving:** Zero tolerance for alcohol The blood alcohol limit is zero, and has been since 1953. One beer is an offence and police test freely. Motorways need an electronic vignette bought before you join. - **Castle season:** April to early November About a hundred state castles open from early April to early November, most closed on Mondays. Interiors are seen by guided tour, so check the last tour time. Book Karlštejn and Český Krumlov early. ## When to visit - **Jan** - **Feb** - **Mar** - **Apr** (good) - **May** (best) - **Jun** (best) - **Jul** (peak) - **Aug** (peak) - **Sep** (best) - **Oct** (good) - **Nov** - **Dec** (peak) ## Fun fact 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 - **Myth:** "Czechia" is a nickname somebody invented **Reality:** It is the country's official short name, the equivalent of Česko, and the government registered it in the UN name databases in 2016. The Czech Republic remains the formal name for official occasions. Both are correct, and the foreign ministry publishes a page on when to use which. - **Myth:** It is Eastern Europe **Reality:** Central Europe, and the map is blunt: Prague sits at 14.4 degrees east, about two degrees west of Vienna. The country borders Germany and Austria along most of its edge, was an industrial heartland of the Habsburg empire, and builds in Gothic, Baroque and functionalist styles. - **Myth:** Prague is the country **Reality:** Prague is one city in a country of ten and a half million. East of the Bohemian highlands lies Moravia, with its own dialects and wine. Brno has a functionalist skyline and a UNESCO-listed villa, Olomouc the finer main square, and the western spa towns are another world. - **Myth:** Trdelník is a traditional Czech pastry **Reality:** It is a spit cake with Hungarian and Transylvanian roots and a long tradition in Skalica, just over the Slovak border. It reached Prague's stalls in the early 2000s as tourist food, and no older Czech cookbook carries it. Pleasant hot, but not the national pastry. - **Myth:** Czech is basically Russian **Reality:** Both 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. - 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 - **Václav Havel**: Playwright and dissident, last president of Czechoslovakia and first of the Czech Republic - **Franz Kafka**: Prague-born author of The Trial, 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**: Poster artist who defined Art Nouveau, and painter of the twenty-canvas Slav Epic - **Emil Zátopek**: Won the 5,000 m, 10,000 m and marathon at the 1952 Olympics, his first marathon - **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 away from 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**: Author of The Good Soldier Švejk, the funniest, most subversive novel of the Great 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 of Future Systems, designer of the Selfridges building in Birmingham - **Eva Jiřičná**: Architect known for glass and steel staircases, working from 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, prototyped on a bicycle-kit machine - **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 Bohemian king who made Prague a capital and founded its university - **Jan Hus**: Reformer burned in 1415, a century before Luther. His spelling reform gave Czech the háček - **Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk**: Philosopher and founding president of Czechoslovakia in 1918 - **Milada Horáková**: Resistance member and politician executed after a 1950 show trial. Now a memorial day - **Jan Palach**: Student who set himself alight in Wenceslas Square in 1969 against the Soviet occupation ## Must-try Czech food - **Svíčková na smetaně**: The Sunday plate: beef in root-vegetable cream sauce, dumplings, cranberry and cream. - **Vepřo knedlo zelo**: Roast pork, dumplings and stewed cabbage. The dish most people call national. - **Guláš**: Beef goulash, darker and milder in paprika than Hungary's, with dumplings and raw onion. - **Rajská omáčka**: Sweet tomato sauce over boiled beef and dumplings. School food nobody outgrows. - **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. South Bohemian, and the best soup here. - **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 before everything. - **Houskový knedlík**: The steamed, sliced bread dumpling. It is there to collect the sauce. - **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**: Edam crumbed and deep fried, with tartar sauce and chips. Student food, everywhere. - **Utopenec**: Sausage pickled with onion in vinegar, "the drowned man". A bar jar, with dark bread. - **Nakládaný hermelín**: Soft white cheese in oil with garlic, chilli and peppercorns. The other bar jar. - **Řízek**: Breaded pork or chicken schnitzel with potato salad, and half of the Christmas Eve dinner. - **Chlebíčky**: Open sandwiches on potato salad from a lahůdky 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. - **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 Prague corner chimney cake, Hungarian and Slovak in origin, sold here since the 2000s. - **Pilsner-style lager**: Pale lager, invented in Plzeň in 1842. Order by degree: a 10 is lighter, a 12 fuller. - **Nefiltrované pivo**: Unfiltered, unpasteurised beer from the tank. Cloudier, softer, best near the brewery. - **Becherovka**: Herbal bitter from Karlovy Vary, drunk cold as a digestif or long with tonic. - **Slivovice**: Moravian plum brandy, often homemade, poured at a strength that assumes you are staying. - **Moravian white wine**: Veltlínské zelené and Ryzlink from Mikulov and Znojmo, mostly drunk at home. - **Kofola**: Herbal cola from the 1960s, still on tap in pubs, with real local loyalty. - **Svařák**: Mulled wine, the fuel of every Advent market and every winter castle courtyard. ## By theme - [Castles & palaces](https://wimup.com/castles.md) - [Christmas markets](https://wimup.com/christmas-markets.md) - [Hidden gems of Europe](https://wimup.com/hidden-gems-europe.md) - [Hot springs](https://wimup.com/hot-springs.md) - [Cherry blossom in Europe](https://wimup.com/cherry-blossom-europe.md) ## Films - [Prague Travel Guide](https://wimup.com/watch/prague.md), 25:04 - [Olomouc Travel Guide](https://wimup.com/watch/olomouc.md), 16:31 ## FAQs ### 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 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. Euro prices in a shop window signal a tourist district. 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. ## Related countries - [Italy](https://wimup.com/country/italy.md) - [France](https://wimup.com/country/france.md) - [All of Europe](https://wimup.com/europe) Part of [Europe](https://wimup.com/europe.md) ## Sources - [Tourism board](https://www.visitczechia.com/en-us?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Visa](https://mzv.gov.cz/jnp/en/information_for_aliens/short_stay_visa/index.html?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - [Castle season](https://www.npu.cz/en?utm_source=wimup.com&utm_medium=referral) - Rankings are Wimup editorial picks. Prices, durations and budgets are editorial estimates, not live quotes; check the official site before you go.