Charles Bridge Guide: History, Statues and When to Go

For more than four centuries this was the only bridge across the Vltava in Prague, and it still ties the castle side to the Old Town. Charles IV laid the foundation stone in 1357, and the work, led by Peter Parler, the architect of St Vitus Cathedral, ran into the early 15th century. Locals called it simply the Stone Bridge until 1870. It is about 516 metres long, rests on 16 arches, and has survived sieges, coronation processions and, in 1890, a flood that swept two of those arches away.

The statues worth finding

The saints arrived much later, mostly between 1683 and 1714, when Catholic orders lined the parapets as a statement of faith after the religious wars. Almost all are now copies; the weathered originals are kept in the Lapidarium of the National Museum and in the casemates at Vyšehrad. Four to look for:

• St John of Nepomuk: the oldest statue, cast in bronze in 1683, about halfway across on the north side. The priest was thrown into the river from the bridge in 1393; visitors rub the relief below him for luck, and a small brass cross set into the parapet nearby marks the spot where he fell.
• St Luitgard: Matthias Braun's sculpture of a blind nun kissing the wounds of Christ, often called the finest work on the bridge.
• The Crucifix: the bridge's oldest religious image, with a gilded Hebrew inscription added in 1696 and paid for by a fine imposed on a Jewish man; plaques beside it now explain this humiliating history.
• Bruncvík: a knight with a golden sword standing on a pier below the bridge, seen best from Kampa Island. Legend says a magic sword is walled up inside the bridge.

Climbing the bridge towers

The Gothic Old Town Bridge Tower, also designed by Parler, carries statues of Charles IV and his son Wenceslas IV above the arch. Climb it for the classic view west along the bridge to the castle. On the Malá Strana side stand two towers: the lower one survives from the Judith Bridge, the bridge's predecessor, and the taller Gothic one gives the reverse view toward the Old Town. Both have small ticket offices; check opening times on the city museum site.

Timing, crowds and photo spots

Before 8am the bridge belongs to joggers and photographers. From mid-morning to late evening it fills with licensed painters, musicians and slow-moving tour groups, and pickpockets work the densest stretch around the Nepomuk statue. For photographs of the bridge rather than from it, walk to Novotného lávka on the Old Town bank, the riverside at Kampa, or the Čertovka mill stream underneath the western arches. At night, with the statues lit and the castle glowing above, it is the walk that ends most days in the Old Town.