Josefov and Stare Mesto

The Rudolfinum Cafe
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We decided to dedicate our last full day in Prague to Josefov and the Stare Mesto (Old Town). We started the morning with a coffee in the cafe at the Rudolfinum Concert Hall, located on the Stare Mesto side right on the river. This was a great place to have a coffee and just soak in the atmosphere of a lovely, old building. We were building ourselves up to visit Josefov.

Josefov is the Old Jewish Quarter in Prague. At its height, this area housed over 180,000 Jewish people, though much of the area was demolished in the early 1900s. Nowadays Josefov consists of 6 buildings and one of the few remaining Jewish cemeterys in Eastern Europe. The cemetery was spared by Hitler during the Second World War, as he was planning on creating a Jewish Museum of the area.

The Synagogue we started our tour of Josefov at
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The tour of Josefov is very popular and very regimented, as you buy a timed ticket starting at a dictated location and then following the route from there. You get a set time at each location, and then a few minutes to walk to the next. The whole museum was very moving, but I did find that the time limits did detract from the overall experience, as you were constantly checking your watch. By far the most overwhelming room was the Synanogue you enter just before the cemetery, where thousands of names of Jewish people who died during the Holocaust are written all over the walls. The devastation of the Holocaust really hits you when you can put names to it, and the sheer number of names is almost too much to bear. The art that is displayed here, drawn by children held in concentration camps all over Europe, is also devastating. We would end up visiting Auschwitz from Krakow in the second week of this trip, so we ended up with a full story of that terrible time.

A view of the river from the Stare Mesto side
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In the afternoon we just wandered through the Stare Mesto, stumbling upon an art fair where we picked up a couple of nice pictures, and just generally enjoying the beautiful buildings. I think Stare Mesto is where the nightlife is, but it's also where there are tons of tourists, so we were happy we had stayed on the other side of the river. Prague is supposed to have tons of stag and hen parties visiting, but as we weren't there over a week-end, this really wasn't a problem for us. We also weren't really visiting the types of places they tend to go to. That night we grabbed a pizza, then ended up at the St Nicolas Cafe. There was an American Blues player on who we really enjoyed listening to and ended up chatting with for some of the evening. In fact there were tons of Expats in the Cafe that night, so we heard a lot about what it is like to live in Prague - sounds pretty fun, actually!