Self-guided City Walk Stately Apartment Buildings in a Residential Area

Vrsovice is a relatively unknown district in Prague. A walk through this part of the city is a true pleasure because of the beautiful facades of the buildings. At the same time you also get a good impression of a residential area with pre-war apartment buildings. There is plenty of opportunity to eat or drink something along the way.

Most of the city walk is along Kodanska, an interesting street with a metropolitan feel and elegance. Here you will find luxurious apartment buildings from the early 20th century in various architectural styles, as well as some interesting Art Nouveau architecture. Characteristics are bay windows, balconies and turrets.

Self-guided walk Vrsovice

START: Slavia-nadrazi Eden tram stop
END: Ruska tram stop on Moskevska Street

1. Take tram 7 or 22 to the Slavia nadrazi Eden stop

Just opposite the tram stop is the Eden shopping centre, relatively small by Prague standards as there are only about eighty shops. The Tesco hypermarket is open 24 hours a day. The shopping centre itself has long opening hours from 09.00-21.00.

2. Cross the tram tracks and cross Vrsovicka Street, walk straight on, you are now in Bělocerkevska a wide street with a central reservation that bends slightly to the right. Take the first street on the left, 28. Pluku Street

Halfway down the street on the right is a salmon-coloured building. This is the largest judicial complex in the Czech Republic. It was the former barracks where the 28th Hapsburg regiment was stationed at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Hence the street name 28. Pluku. Pluj is the Czech word for regiment.

At 28. Pluku 29 is U nas ve Vrsovice, bakery and restaurant with a daily menu at a fixed price, inside the walls are covered with Serbian newspapers showing cultural articles. The furniture consists of tables that used to be old sewing machines. All windowsills, shelves, nooks and corners are filled with books, most of them in Czech. The owner is from Serbia. That is why the menu always includes a few Serbian dishes.

3. Continue to the five-way junction. Turn sharp left into Kodanska.
Halfway down the street is a striking building with a multi-coloured facade. This is the 4D Center. Twenty years ago this was a dull, grey building, now it is brightly coloured. The French-Israeli artist Yaac Agam used a total of three hundred colours to create an illusion of a rainbow.

4. Walk back to the five-way junction, turn right into Tolsteho.
The apartment buildings at numbers 11 and 13 have a facade in Art Nouveau style and feature the inscriptions: Washington and Chicago. Below this 1908 and the name of the architect, Edvard Paroubek., and also the name Vladimír Holeček who commissioned the building.

5. Walk back and turn right into Kodanska.
First street on the right is Slovinska. Worth seeing here are numbers 12 and 23

6. Walk back to Kodanska
Worth seeing are numbers 49 and 47.

7. Turn right into Zitomirska, then left into Mexiska and left into Bulharska
Worth seeing are Bulharska 7 and 3

8. Turn left into Finska and then right into Kodanska
Worth seeing are Kodanska 39, 37, 35, 33 and 29

9. Turn right into Moskevska, then right into Ruska
Ruska 6, 8 and 12 are worth seeing. Both houses have rich stucco walls, house no. 6 has the inscription ‘Věrné naše milování’, Faithful to our love, and no. 8 ‘Kde domov můj’, where is my house.

10. Walk back to Moskevska
Here is the Ruska tram stop for trams 4, 13 and 22 to the centre

END OF THE WALK