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The Best Places to Drink and Stay in Mala Strana & Josefov

  1. Three historic buildings, one modern addition, and somehow it all coheres on the Vltava riverbank a short walk from Charles Bridge. This Forbes Five Star hotel holds a Michelin Key and earns both by doing exactly what a great luxury hotel should, just a degree better than expected. Pierre-Yves Rochon handled the interiors, Prague Castle fills the better room windows, and the Old Town is essentially at the front door.


  2. A former Dominican monastery in Malá Strana, steps from Prague Castle, converted into a Forbes Four Star hotel where the old chapel is now the spa. Gothic arches and medieval stonework share space with Asian-inflected furnishings, and some rooms look out over the monastery courtyard, which is the kind of view that makes you feel like you accidentally booked somewhere better than you intended.


  3. Alma Prague landed at number 25 on Europe's 50 Best Bars list, which feels about right for a place that refuses to be just one thing. It's a contemporary restaurant and bar in Nové Město with an open kitchen, a courtyard terrace, and a cocktail list serious enough to carry the evening long after dinner. A Michelin Bib Gourmand keeps the food honest, and the sourdough alone, sourced from a local Libeň bakery, sets the tone.


    Address
    V Jirchářích 150/8, Nové Město 110 00, 1 Praha 1, Czechia · Praha
    Hours

    Open now, until 3 PM

    Thursday 11:30 AM–3 PM, 5:30 PM–11 PM, 4:30 PM–Midnight

    Online
    WebsiteInstagram
  4. The awards


  5. Rank 3. Forbína Bar

    Cocktail Bar

    A velvet curtain separates this cocktail bar from the historic Café Slavia next door, which says a lot about Forbína's sense of theatre. Sitting across from the National Theatre, it draws on ballet, opera, and drama as actual cocktail briefs, not mood boards. The hand-melted glass lighting and wood-inlaid stage-like room do most of the heavy lifting before the drinks arrive. It landed on Europe's 50 Best Bars list, so the conceit is clearly working.


  6. Casanova's ghost would feel right at home here, which either sells you or doesn't. This lavish Baroque hotel in Malá Strana tucks 26 rooms and 19 suites between Prague Castle and Petřín Hill, each dressed in gilded filigree, crystal chandeliers, antique furnishings, and hand-painted wallpaper that suggests an Italian princess briefly stepped out. The Gothic cellars beneath it all house an Indonesian-inspired spa, which is exactly the kind of left turn a hotel like this earns.

    The awards


  7. The awards


  8. Augustinian monks still live in one wing of this thirteen-century monastery hotel, which means the guests on the other side are sleeping inside living history. Olga Polizzi oversaw the conversion, keeping the frescoes and baroque detailing intact while threading in early Czech modernism. The monks' original beer recipe still appears in the garden. The former observatory is now a panoramic suite. Michelin awarded it one Key.

    The awards


  9. Across the street from Frank Gehry's famously wobbly Dancing House on the Vltava, this boutique hotel takes its cues from Gothic Prague and the Czech Cubist tradition rather than the cold minimalism that defined the design-hotel wave. The rooms lean warm and layered, the common areas are softly lit and a little sumptuous, and enough original architecture survived to give the whole place genuine visual texture. The hotel restaurant, Seven North, serves Mediterranean food in the central courtyard.

    The awards


  10. A top-floor spa channeling alpine-lodge energy while overlooking Prague's rooftops is a genuinely odd trick, and the Emblem pulls it off. This boutique hotel near Old Town, designed by Alison McNeil, leans into warm retro tones and clean lines without feeling like a mood board. Rooms are set up for people who stopped separating work from everything else a long time ago, which is most of us now.

    The awards


  11. An aparthotel in the old town where each floor runs its own design brief, from floral wallpaper and vintage furniture to a Japanese-minimalist room anchored by an 80-year-old tree trunk coffee table. You get a kitchen, your own front door, and the general fiction of living locally, but a concierge is still one WhatsApp message away if you need a dinner booking or a car. Six concepts in total, so there's some actual choosing involved.

    The awards


  12. A Neo-Renaissance building on a quiet stretch between the river and the old city, The Manes is a boutique hotel where the bones are grand and the rooms feel considered rather than corporate. Underfloor-heated bathrooms and warm finishes suggest someone thought past the Instagram shot. You're close enough to the major sights to feel oriented, far enough from the tourist scrum to feel sane. The Michelin Guide includes it among its selected hotels.

    The awards


  13. Each floor of this boutique hotel in Malá Strana is dedicated to a musical genre, and each soundproofed room to a specific composer or performer, complete with a curated CD library. A staff musicologist is on hand if you'd like a guided tour of your artist's back catalogue, which is either delightful or deeply unnecessary depending on your personality. The rooftop terrace looks out over Prague Castle and the Charles Bridge, so there's plenty to do if Mozart isn't your thing.

    The awards


  14. A converted fourteenth-century convent just down the hill from Prague Castle, named for the poet Jan Neruda, who grew up on these same crooked Malá Strana streets. The 42 rooms inside are crisply modern, calm, and functional, which turns out to be exactly the right call given the tourist noise you leave at the door. No pampering, no grand lobby theater, just a quiet and well-placed hotel with a few centuries of good bones.

    The awards


  15. Rank 15. Black Angel's Bar

    Cocktail Bar

    The awards


  16. Rank 15. Hemingway Bar

    Cocktail Bar

    The awards


Eat Score

The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

    How we score →

    Drink Score

    The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

      How we score →

      Stay Score

      Four fifths of the score is the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin Key outweighs a listicle. The last fifth is where it is: the ranked places to eat and things to do around it, and how safe the country is. When you sort by what's nearby, distance from you changes the order, never the score.

        How we score →

        Do Score

        The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

          How we score →

          Best Place Score

          The Best Place Score rates the area around a point, not any one place. The places are 60% of it: the best of what's within reach, weighed by distance. The setting is the other 40%: how life goes in that country (how people rate their own lives, how long and how well they live, how safe they are) and what it's like right there (the air, and the weather). If the score looks low, we probably haven't found enough critics out here yet.