From the Powder Tower to the Old Jewish Cemetery: Old Town and Josefov

Most first walks in Prague race from the Astronomical Clock to the Castle. This one stays on the right bank and slows down. It begins at a Gothic gate where Bohemian kings entered the Old Town, passes the theatre where Mozart conducted his own opera, stops under the twin spires of the Týn Church, and then crosses a few streets into Josefov, the old Jewish Town, where synagogues from the 13th to the 19th century stand within a few minutes of each other.

It is a short distance on foot with a great deal to see inside. Give the Jewish Museum's sites most of your time: a single ticket covers the synagogues and the cemetery on this walk, and they are closed on Saturdays.

Start where the Old Town once ended. The foundation stone of the Powder Tower was laid in 1475, and from 1478 the master builder Matěj Rejsek carried on the work and designed much of its sculpture. The town council presented it to King Vladislav II as a coronation gift, and later kings walked through it on their way to be crowned in St Vitus Cathedral.

The name came much later: in the early 18th century the tower stored gunpowder. What you see today is largely the work of the architect Josef Mocker, who restored and completed it in a pseudo-Gothic style between 1875 and 1886. Look for the statues of Vladislav II and George of Poděbrady on the side facing Celetná Street.

A few streets west stands a theatre with a story that music lovers still travel for. The Estates Theatre opened in 1783, built for Count Franz Anton von Nostitz-Rieneck. On 29 October 1787, Mozart conducted the premiere of Don Giovanni here, and in 1791 he led the premiere of La clemenza di Tito, staged for the coronation of Emperor Leopold II.

The building holds a second claim on Czech hearts. In 1834 a song from a play by Josef Kajetán Tyl, with music by František Škroup, was first sung on this stage. It later became the Czech national anthem. Today the theatre belongs to the National Theatre, and its opera company still gives Mozart pride of place.

Two dark spires, each crowned with a cluster of smaller ones, rise 80 metres above Old Town Square. The Church of Our Lady before Týn was begun in the 14th century and completed in the 1450s, and for about two centuries it was a church of the Hussites. A great golden chalice, their symbol, once stood on its gable. After the Battle of White Mountain it was taken down in 1626 and replaced by a statue of the Virgin Mary, whose halo was made from the melted chalice.

The way in is part of the fun: the main entrance is reached through a narrow passage between the houses in front of the church. Inside, find the tombstone of the astronomer Tycho Brahe by the first pillar on the south side of the nave, a baptismal font from 1414, and the main altar of 1649 with a painting by Karel Škréta.

Head north into Josefov. The Spanish Synagogue was completed in 1868 on the site of the Old School, presumably the oldest synagogue in the Jewish Town. Its architects, Vojtěch Ignác Ullmann and Josef Niklas, chose a Moorish Revival style inspired by the art of Spain's Arabic period, which is most likely where the name comes from.

Step inside and look up. Between 1882 and 1893 every surface was covered with gilded, many-coloured arabesques. The synagogue now holds the Jewish Museum's exhibition on the modern history of the Jews in the Czech lands. In the little park beside it stands Jaroslav Róna's statue of Franz Kafka.

A short walk west brings you to a building of a very different age. The Old-New Synagogue was completed in 1270, which makes it Europe's oldest active synagogue and one of the earliest Gothic buildings in Prague. Its two naves are covered by vaults with five ribs instead of the usual four or six; one explanation is that it avoided the shape of a cross, though many scholars dispute it.

This is also the home of Prague's most famous legend. Rabbi Judah Loew is said to have made a golem from clay, and its body is said to lie in the attic, where the community keeps worn-out sacred texts. Neither a renovation in 1883 nor a look into the attic in 2014 found any trace of it, and the attic is closed to visitors, which only keeps the story alive.

End among the stones. Burials at the Old Jewish Cemetery began in the early 1400s and stopped in 1786. The Jewish Town had no room to grow, so each time the ground filled up, earth was spread over the graves and the old stones were lifted onto the new layer; in places the burials lie twelve deep. What you see now is a packed, leaning crowd of gravestones. The oldest dates from 1439 and belongs to the rabbi and poet Avigdor Kara.

Rabbi Loew of the golem legend is buried here, as is the businessman Mordecai Maisel. Look for the carvings on the stones: lions, geese and other symbols often hint at a name, a family or a profession. Beside the cemetery, the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue carry the painted names of tens of thousands of Jews from Bohemia and Moravia who were murdered in the Holocaust.

In a few hundred metres you have walked through five centuries of Prague: a royal gate, a theatre of the Enlightenment, a Gothic church that changed faiths, and a Jewish Town whose synagogues and graves outlasted the streets around them. The Castle can wait for another day; the Old Town has already told you a great deal.