An industrial bend in the river where Prague's contemporary art, its best market halls and a good deal of its nightlife have quietly relocated.
What it is
A meander of the Vltava that was industrial from the nineteenth century — slaughterhouses, breweries, docks, railway yards — annexed to Prague in 1884 and left to decline after 1989.
Over the last fifteen years the warehouses have filled with galleries, studios, clubs and coffee roasters, which is a familiar pattern in every European city and has happened here later and less expensively than most.
What to see
Veletržní Palace — the National Gallery’s modern and contemporary collections in a 1928 functionalist building, with the Czech cubism that exists nowhere else.
DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, in a converted factory, with a 42-metre wooden airship called Gulliver built onto the roof as an exhibition and reading space. The programme is genuinely international and often political.
Pražská tržnice, the Prague Market — a nineteenth-century slaughterhouse complex of 22 halls, now holding food stalls, a large and very good Vietnamese section reflecting Prague’s substantial Vietnamese community, design studios, a theatre and a bookshop.
Vnitroblock, a converted factory yard holding a café, a dance studio, a shoe shop and a cinema, and one of the pleasanter places to spend an afternoon in the city.
Bio Oko, a 1930s cinema showing arthouse films, with deckchairs and a car seat in the front row.
The Cross Club, a bar and club built entirely out of welded scrap metal and moving machinery, which has to be seen.
The river
The Holešovice bend has a riverside path and a marina, and the Štvanice island in the middle of the river has a park, a tennis stadium and a new footbridge to both banks that opened recently.
Letná Park rises on the southern edge with the beer garden and the view.
Eating and drinking
The neighbourhood has become one of the better eating areas in Prague, with a concentration around Komunardů and Dělnická.
Vietnamese food in the market halls, which is a genuine strength of Prague and undersold — the community dates from labour agreements between socialist Czechoslovakia and North Vietnam, and it is the third-largest minority in the country.
Practical
Metro C to Vltavská for the southern end and Letná, or Nádraží Holešovice for the market and the north.
Nádraží Holešovice is also the station for buses to Terezín and trains north.
The area is spread out — it is a former industrial district and the distances between the interesting things are ten to fifteen minutes on foot.
More Neighbourhoods
Malá Strana
Baroque palaces and steep lanes between the bridge and the castle, largely unchanged since 1700, and empty of people the moment you step off the main route.
Žižkov
The pub density is the highest in the city and possibly in Europe, there is a television tower with bronze babies crawling up it, and almost no visitors come here.