Prague’s first stone crossing was the Judith Bridge of about 1170, destroyed by floods in 1342. Charles IV laid the foundation stone of its replacement on 9 July 1357; work continued under Peter Parler’s workshop and the bridge was finished in the early 15th century. It is 515.76 m long and 9.5 m wide, built of sandstone blocks on sixteen arches, and it was the only bridge across the Vltava in Prague until 1841.
The medieval substance is at the ends. The Old Town Bridge Tower stands on the first pier and was built with the bridge in the later 14th century by Parler’s workshop; its east façade — the side facing the Old Town — carries seated figures of Charles IV and his son Wenceslas IV flanking St Vitus, with the coats of arms of the lands of the Bohemian crown below. Look at it from the square in front of the tower before you climb anything; it is free and it is the best 14th-century sculpture in the open air in Prague. The west façade was smashed by Swedish cannon in the siege of 1648 and never restored. At the far end the Lesser Town towers are a pair: the lower one survives from the Judith Bridge, the taller was built in the mid-15th century.
The thirty statues along the parapet are Baroque and later — placed between 1683 and 1928 — and almost all of them are now copies. The originals went to the National Museum’s Lapidarium (closed until further notice as of August 2026) and to the Gorlice casemate hall at Vyšehrad. Two exceptions stand where they always did: the bronze St John of Nepomuk of 1683 and the gilded Calvary crucifix.
Crossing is free and unrestricted at any hour. The Old Town Bridge Tower is ticketed separately: 138 steps to a gallery about 47 m up, with fragments of Gothic painting in the passage vault on the way in.
