From Strahov Monastery to Our Lady Victorious: The Castle District and Malá Strana

Prague's story is easiest to follow on one hill. Monks settled on the western end in the twelfth century, princes and kings built on the ridge, and after the Thirty Years' War the nobles and churchmen filled the slope below with palaces and Baroque domes.

This walk runs along that story, from the monastery at the top to the churches of Malá Strana at the bottom. It spends its time on the places around the castle's courtyards rather than the castle itself, which has its own guide. Allow a half day: three of the stops are places to go inside and take your time.

Start at the top, at Strahov Monastery. Premonstratensian canons settled here in 1143, and the order still lives on the site. It was the oldest house of the order in Bohemia, and it has been burned, plundered and, in 1950, emptied by the Communists. The canons came back after 1989.

The reason to come is the library. Its Theological Hall dates from the 1670s and its Philosophical Hall from the end of the eighteenth century. To protect the books, visitors look into the halls from the doorway rather than walking in, so take your time at the threshold and look up at the painted ceilings. Then walk downhill towards the castle.

You can see the cathedral's spires from a long way off, but the size of Saint Vitus Cathedral only sinks in at the foot of its south side. Work began in 1344, when Prague became an archbishopric, and the building was consecrated in 1929, nearly six hundred years later.

The first architect, Matthias of Arras, died in 1352 and the young Peter Parler took over. Parler designed the Saint Wenceslas Chapel, and he is buried in the cathedral. Go in and follow the nave to see the Gothic vaults and the chapels along the sides, and look for the places where the medieval work gives way to the nineteenth-century and twentieth-century parts. Then walk round the east end of the building.

Just east of the cathedral, Saint George's Basilica is much older and much smaller. It was founded around 920 by Prince Vratislav I, and the Romanesque look inside dates from the rebuilding after a fire in 1142. The plain stone interior is a surprise after the cathedral.

In the chapel dedicated to her you will find the tomb of Saint Ludmila, grandmother of Saint Wenceslas. Stand in the nave, between the round arches, and picture how much more of the hill looked like this before the Gothic cathedral went up beside it. A short walk further east and north brings you to the next stop.

Golden Lane is a row of tiny, brightly painted cottages built into the castle wall. They went up in the late sixteenth century under Rudolf II to house the castle's marksmen, and the houses are small because there was little room. Goldsmiths moved in later, which gave the lane its name. The story that alchemists made gold here is a legend: they lived elsewhere in the castle.

Franz Kafka stayed at number 22 in 1916 and 1917, in his sister's house. Duck into one or two of the cottages, which are cramped enough to show how the marksmen lived. When you are done, leave the castle downhill, heading for the long palace wall at the bottom.

At the foot of the hill, Wallenstein Palace is the first of the great Baroque palaces of Malá Strana. Albrecht von Wallenstein, a commander in the Thirty Years' War, had it built from 1623 to 1630, on ground cleared of older houses. Wallenstein was assassinated in 1634 at Eger, now Cheb.

The palace is now the seat of the Czech Senate. The easy part to visit is the garden, open in the warmer months: look for the Sala Terrena, a big open pavilion with three arches painted with scenes from the Trojan War. The Senate's own pages say when the interior can be visited. Then walk on through the old streets towards the big green dome.

The dome of Saint Nicholas dominates Malá Strana. It was built on the site of a Gothic church from the thirteenth century, with work starting in 1704. Christoph Dientzenhofer designed the nave, his son Kilian Ignaz the chancel and the dome, and the church was finished in the middle of the 1750s.

Inside, look up. The dome fresco is by František Xaver Palko, and the nave ceiling by Jan Lukáš Kracker. Look back towards the organ, which has more than four thousand pipes and was played by Mozart in 1787. The square outside is a good place for a coffee.

Finish a short way south at Our Lady Victorious. German-speaking Lutherans built it between 1611 and 1613. After the Battle of White Mountain it passed to the Carmelites, who rededicated it.

It now draws visitors for the Infant Jesus of Prague, a small statue that came from Spain and was given to the Carmelites by Polyxena of Lobkowicz in 1628. The statue is dressed in different robes through the year. Go in to see it, and climb the spiral stair by the main altar to the small museum of its robes and crowns.

In a few hours you have walked from a twelfth-century monastery to a church finished in the 1750s. On the way you have seen how a ridge became a seat of power, and how that power left its mark first in stone and Gothic vaults, then in painted ceilings and palace gardens.

For the Old Town side of the story, the other two Prague guides pick up where this one ends.