Sir Prague

Frank Gehry's Dancing House leans on the Vltava embankment, and next door Sir Prague stands as straight as it was built in 1884: a neo-Renaissance block with Corinthian columns and stone satyrs, a hotel since March 2025. Linda Boronkay has furnished it from the city's own past - hand-painted Cubist art, traditional Czech pieces, and Princess Libuše, fetched in from legend. One bedroom is sage green, with a padded headboard in a dense patterned fabric and curtains banded in oxblood at the hem. From other tall double windows the neighbours are white stucco and a grey-tiled turret topped with finials, better company for the satyrs than Gehry. The Library has board games, and chamber music under Murano chandeliers; the courtyard many rooms look onto gets a small bar in season, wrapped in greenery.

Recommended for couples who want a design hotel that knows which city it is in, and for families: the Sir Family has two bedrooms for four, and the family offer adds early check-in and late check-out. Book a Sir Corner River View, for the soaking tub and a window seat with the river in it. Charles Bridge is 1.2 kilometres north along the water, a good walk if the embankment lets you go, with bars built into its wall and more on the houseboats moored along it. Dinner is Seven North's Mediterranean sharing plates, from a menu that changes daily, after a salted-coffee martini at the bar by its door. Dan Brown sent Robert Langdon through Prague's historical sites in The Secret of Secrets, and the hotel's Mystery Stay, inspired by him, offers a gentler version: a private tour of the city's hidden corners, with nobody going missing.