Main Station: Josef Fanta's Art Nouveau Gateway

Why is it significant?

Face the long facade with the two towers and the great arched window between them, crowned with glass domes and stone figures. And now notice the absurdity: a multi-lane highway runs right in front of it, so the most beautiful station in Prague has to be admired over traffic.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Face the long facade with the two towers and the great arched window between them, crowned with glass domes and stone figures. And now notice the absurdity: a multi-lane highway runs right in front of it, so the most beautiful station in Prague has to be admired over traffic.

The building was designed by Josef Fanta and built between 1901 and 1909, at the peak of Art Nouveau. Its first name was the Emperor Franz Joseph Station. In 1919, in the new republic, it became Wilson Station, in thanks to the American president Woodrow Wilson, who had backed Czechoslovak independence. The Nazis removed Wilson's name, the communists eventually settled on the plain Prague Main Station in the 1950s... and in 2011 a new statue of Wilson was unveiled in the park nearby. Every regime has left its fingerprints on this sign.

Here is the story that matters most. In 1939, trains left these platforms carrying 669 mostly Jewish children to safety in Britain, organised by a young London stockbroker, Nicholas Winton, who kept quiet about it for almost fifty years. On one of the platforms a bronze statue of Winton holding a child stands among the commuters, unveiled in 2009. Most of the parents who waved goodbye here never saw their children again.

In the 1970s the communist planners built the motorway across the front and dug a new concourse underneath, and for decades Fanta's dome hall was neglected. It has since been restored, and you can sit under the gilded dome in a café named after Fanta himself, surrounded by stucco and painted ornaments, while departure boards flicker below.

Look for the sculptures on the facade and the ironwork of the great hall: this is Prague Art Nouveau in its most confident mood, a station that wanted to greet travellers like a palace. From the station, head back west and turn into Hybernská street, a straight line leading towards the Powder Tower.