Castles · Tour

Mucha Made the Window, and the Pickup and Ticket Are in the Price

Three hours at Prague Castle with a private guide, in the afternoon, and everything arranged: hotel pickup, the tram up, and admission, which most operators charge separately. Private here means the route bends to you. Skip the fourth chapel if you have had enough of chapels. Stay ten minutes longer in the cathedral because the light through the south wall is doing something. Nobody is waiting for the group to reassemble. The stories are specific rather than general. The mob that threw three men out of a window and started a war. The alchemists hired to make gold, who did not. The Habsburg family arrangements, which make most families look calm. If you know the period already, the guide will go deeper; that is the advantage of one guide and one group. What you see in three hours: the stained glass Alfons Mucha designed in St Vitus, Vladislav Hall, where kings rode horses indoors, the quiet garden with the roofs and the river below it, St George's Basilica with St Ludmila, and the Golden Lane. The afternoon is chosen deliberately: better light, fewer people. Lunch afterwards is optional, at a place Czechs actually use.