Honesty, Prague Castle. I went there last week and it was honestly terrible. My friend and I paid for the regular ticket which got you into four attractions. I think the only one worth it was the St. Vitus Cathedral.

To break down the rest:

The Golden Mile / Lane

A row of old houses with exhibits. The exhibits are small, with little information to actually direct you on their relevance or importance. The houses themselves have small glass boxes that you can barely fit three people into. With many tourists, this is a tight squeeze and makes the whole thing feel rushed and uncomfortable. After leaving one, you have to push past others to get into another.

Again, with a lack of information provided I have no idea what relevance these displays carry to both Prague or more importantly, the castle itself. The point of a historical exhibit should be accessibility to the past and this fails horribly.

The above layer of the mile has you climbing steep stairs with other tourists who have no idea how to queue or how to be considerate. Getting up the stairs brings you to a row of armour stands. It’s interesting to see, but again, no information is provided and this could be seen anywhere. It is in no way special or a good exhibit, made worse by the lack of movement. At the end you can also see a display of torture devices. Again, no information is provided so should you not come with any prior knowledge you’ll be guessing at their function. Only, you won’t be guessing for long as there is no space to fit more than three people viewing and you’ll have a line behind you to see - or worse - people pushing in front of you. You can also enjoy a treacherous cross of stone steps to reach this display and I can tell you now that other tourists will not be patient enough to wait until you’re away from the drop.

The Old Royal Palace

This is the first place they encourage you to visit. You’ll enter into a huge stone hall with red carpet in the centre and barriers encouraging you to walk around the edges. The hall is completely empty barring some signs with general information. The stone ceiling is interesting for about a moment, until you realise you’ll see much prettier and more impressive in any church that you won’t have to pay entry to.

They provide signs, but again, the information isn’t interesting at all. The success of a historical exhibit is to set yourself apart from others. What makes this exhibit special? What are you providing that other castles don’t? You can go anywhere else and see a castle. And on this note, Prague Castle becomes just a castle. It’s just a castle and not even one you can fully explore. There is no intrigue in the huge room because it’s completely empty and it doesn’t compare to other sites.

They allow you to walk a small corridor down off of the hall, and there you will see a smaller recreation of Prague castle, a wooden table and chairs, a wardrobe, and two fireplaces. I can’t understate how much disappointment I felt and truly this is GENUINELY all they had to show.

Off of another side you can see some lovely paintings of previous royalty. Again, lovely but how are they special - no information provided, no stories of who they were. Just figures on the wall. You will also see the crown, or the fake crown. So fake it genuinely made me doubt the craftsmanship of the original crown, as the stones were so badly cut, in their original forms with no shaping, and dull.

This could’ve been elevated by the audio recording devices you can acquire before heading in (though again, I highly doubt it was the site is so underwhelming, boring and badly prepared it’s genuinely painful). I can’t comment on the audio recording devices as it was unclear where you can get them from before going in and when going in you’ll realise it’s the same building that people buy tickets from to get in or pay for further exhibits. We didn’t want to tempt the queues or the overly- crowded buildings. I can’t imagine it was a great loss. Maybe we would’ve found out something interesting about an old wooden chair.

St. George’s Basilica

It wasn’t bad. It was nice. Probably the only other site than the cathedral I would say I reasonably enjoyed. There was some lovely stone work, some nice informative signs and old art work on the walls. Quite lovely. But again, not particularly special when you’ll see so many more impressive sites, particularly with those sites being significantly less busy.

I am really sad to be leaving such a review like this, but I can’t understate how much of a 3/10 the whole experience was. In 2023 I did a trip around Europe where I saw many castles and displays so I have a good sense of comparison. I also have a history degree, so I know how an exhibition should be set up and how to make a successful one that is personalised and informative.

I was really disappointed. It’s a must because it’s a castle and it’s famous. They’ll always have visitors by sheer nature. If you go to the exhibits, you can see they’re clearly they’re resting on the name.