Guide of Prague, Czech Republic

Prague Experience The City, Czech Republic

Beer is not the only beverage that accompanies the locals’ discussions and chats.  One of the most popular local traditions in this magnificent city is the coffee break. The Austro-Hungarian empire and its capital cities were full of coffee shops, most serving Turkish coffee which, recently, was replaced by espresso coffee in Prague.

If you’re strolling through Praha 1, downtown Prague, between the Old Town and Mála Strana, you can tour Prague by stopping at its historic cafés. Starting from the ceramic mosaics at the Café Imperial, for example, with its Art Nouveau style dating back to 1914, you'll see young and old alike at any hour of the day, animatedly conversing over a nice cup of coffee.

Artists and intellectuals, dissidents and politicians all gathered at Café Slavia overlooking the Vltava flowing under Charles Bridge while ideals of freedom paved the way to revolution and excitement sparked the intuition that led to a poem or first chapter in a famous novel.

A coffee break is also an excellent time to read the newspaper or a book. In Prague, city rich in manuscripts, the coffee-literature combination is widely popular. Intellectuals and authors, publishers and journalists all crowd these historic shops that often organize art exhibits and concerts for the ever-popular jazz scene. A famous downtown café was named after the protagonist in Kafka’s most acclaimed novel, Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa.  

If you enter the Hotel Europa you’ll find a wonderful Art Nouveau café with warm, aristocratic and welcoming décor. The two floors that represent another side to Prague’s history, a city that developed around cups of coffee, preferably long and in a mug, to be sipped slowly, without haste.

Kafírna U Svatého Omara is a café that celebrates coffee by serving thirty different types, each of excellent quality! Popular with the locals, the café is famous for its tiny size: it can only seat 20 but, if you’re lucky, you won't regret stopping in.

To the south, in Praha 2, don’t forget to end your tour at Café Arco, a café founded at the end of the 1800’s and the haunt of the brilliant Prague intellectuals who once included Franz Kafka, Max Brod and may others, later renamed the “Arconauts”. Later, the café hosted Viteszlav Nezval's avant-garde movement and was closed during Nazi occupation.  It reopened in 1998 after long renovations that restored the original architecture.