Letná Park, Prague

Letná Park spreads across the hilltop above the Vltava, a broad public landscape where Prague opens out beyond the trees. The striking metronome on its vast marble base marks a site with an extraordinary political afterlife: a huge Stalin monument stood here from 1955 until its destruction in 1962. The mechanism now occupies that former monument site, and the terrace around it draws skateboarders.

Along the park’s slope-side promenade, views take in the Old Town, Prague Castle, and Petřín. This land was reshaped into a public park during the nineteenth century, with thousands of trees planted as Letná Château was built. Nearby Letná Plain became a defining gathering place in the Velvet Revolution, when more than 750,000 protesters assembled across 25 and 26 November 1989. The park remains a place for strolling, skating, and letting the city’s layered history share the same hill.