# Is Staré Město a Good Area to Stay in Prague? Map & Verdict

Verdict: Mixed. Fine for some travellers, wrong for others.

Interactive map: https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-prague/stare-mesto
Every Prague district: https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-prague.md

Everything you flew here for is inside a ten-minute walk, and so is every stag party in central Europe. Book it for two nights, not for a week.

Facts: 3 min walk to Old Town Square; 45 min to the airport; price €€€€; best for first-timers, sights, couples; lines A, B, 17, 18.

This is the medieval core, and the case for it is simple: you walk out of the hotel into it. Old Town Square, the Astronomical Clock, Charles Bridge, the Jewish Quarter and Wenceslas Square are all within a fifteen-minute walk of each other, and at 07:00 you get the square nearly to yourself. Metro A stops at Staroměstská and metro B at Náměstí republiky, so you are never more than a few minutes from the rest of the city either.

The cost is not only money. Prague's own guide describes tourists making the centre unlivable, and this is the ground they mean. Dlouhá, Dušní and the lanes off the square carry pub crawls until 03:00 on a Thursday, and a room facing one of them is a bad night. Prices follow the crowd: a half-litre of beer that costs 25 to 40 Kč elsewhere in the city runs past 100 Kč on the square, and the same three-star room costs roughly twice what Vinohrady charges.

Book Staré Město if the trip is short, the point is the sights, and you are willing to pay for the walk. Ask for a courtyard-facing room, and check on a map how close the address is to Dlouhá before you pay. If the trip is longer than three nights, the same money buys a bigger, quieter room two metro stops out.

What works:
- Old Town Square, Charles Bridge and Josefov are all within a ten-minute walk
- Metro A at Staroměstská and metro B at Náměstí republiky, plus night trams
- The square is genuinely empty before 08:00, which is when the photographs work
- No public buses run in the historic centre, so the streets are quiet of traffic

What does not:
- Pub crawls run past 03:00 on Dlouhá, Dušní and the lanes around the square
- Beer costs 25 to 40 Kč across the city and over 100 Kč on Old Town Square
- The same standard of room costs roughly double what Vinohrady charges
- Pickpocket teams work the square, Charles Bridge and the metro entrances
- Cobbles on every street, which is hard work with a wheeled suitcase or a pram

Hotels in Staré Město: https://www.stay22.com/allez/booking?aid=stayzones&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.booking.com%2Fsearchresults.html%3Fdest_id%3D270%26dest_type%3Ddistrict%26group_adults%3D2%26no_rooms%3D1

## Other districts in Prague

- [Malá Strana](https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-prague/mala-strana): Recommended. The castle side keeps the views and loses the crowd at 19:00, when the day trips go home. You pay for that, and you walk uphill for it.
- [Nové Město](https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-prague/nove-mesto): Mixed. Three metro lines, ten minutes on foot to Old Town Square, and the two blocks around the main station that every guide tells you to leave by metro.
- [Vinohrady](https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-prague/vinohrady): Recommended. Six minutes on metro A from the centre, half the room rate, and restaurants that fill up with Czechs on a Tuesday. The trade is that you commute.
- [Karlín](https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-prague/karlin): Recommended. Flat, riverside and twenty minutes on foot to Old Town Square, rebuilt after the 2002 flood. Good beds, good food, and nothing at all to look at.
- [Žižkov](https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-prague/zizkov): Mixed. The cheapest central beds in Prague and more pubs per head than anywhere. The core has no metro, it is a hill, and the two halves are not the same place.
- [Smíchov](https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-prague/smichov): Mixed. Four-star rooms at three-star money, five minutes on metro B from the centre. The heart of the district is a shopping centre and a building site.