Connoisseur’s Prague - Art, architecture and design, with privileged access

Fly from London Heathrow to Prague at c. 10.15am (British Airways). After settling into the hotel there is a special visit to the Obecní dům (‘Municipal House’) to see the glorious suite of assembly rooms created 1904–12, a unique and very Czech mélange of murals and ornament.

Drive up to Prague Castle to visit to this extensive hilltop citadel, residence of Dukes and Kings of Bohemia from the 10th century and now of the President. Begin with the Royal Gardens where we view the delicately arcaded Belvedere, the finest Renaissance building in Prague. The Old Royal Palace rises from Romanesque through Gothic to Renaissance and its Vladislav stone hall has extraordinary vaulting. Visit the cathedral of St Vitus, a pioneering monument of High Gothic, richly embellished with chapels, tombs, altarpieces and stained glass. We also gain privileged access to a wonderful sequence of halls not open to the public, dating from the 1570s to the 1930s (state occasions permitting).

Begin with a walk to the 14th-century Charles Bridge, the greatest such structure in Europe, wonderfully adorned with sculptures, before exploring the ancient core of the city on the right bank of the Vltava. A dense maze of dazzlingly picturesque streets and alleys converges on Old Town Square, surely the prettiest urban space in Europe, with beautiful, shimmering façades – medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Art Nouveau. Visit the Church of St. James, a Gothic shell encrusted with Baroque finery after a fire in 1689 and the Gothic Týn church, at the heart not only of Prague but also of Czech history. There follows the 13th-century Convent of St Agnes, where one of the world’s greatest collections of medieval painting is brilliantly installed.

The history of the Jewish community is an indelibly fascinating aspect of Prague´s history. In the former ghetto, the Josefov, there remain six synagogues, a town hall and cemetery. Cross the Vltava river to the Lesser Town walk through the gardens of the Wallenstein Palace (a 1630s residence, now the Senate) and visit St Nicholas, one of the finest of Baroque churches in Central Europe.

Morning visit to the fortress of Vyšehrad, rising high above the river and enclosing a cemetery with the graves of many great Czechs. Continue to the Emmaus monastery whose cloister features a 14th-century cycle of wall paintings. The Schwarzenberg Palace, where we are guided by a curator, has a fine collection of Old Masters. A riverside country retreat, Villa Troja is a 17th-century Italianate mansion with a French formal garden.

A treasure south of the centre is St John Nepomuk ‘on the Rock’, a rarely accessible, little Baroque masterpiece. The Neo-Renaissance National Museum was designed in the 1880s by Josef Schulz as an architectural symbol of the Czech Republic. Then walk in and around Wenceslas Square, threading through a succession of arcades, taking in some outstanding turn-of-the-century architecture and decoration and early modernist masterpieces. In the afternoon there is a curator-led visit of the Veletržní (Trade Fair) Palace of 1928, which houses national and international modern and contemporary art.

Strahov Monastery has commanding views over Prague and two magnificent library halls, which by special arrangement we enter. Then walk down the hill, passing the formidable bulk of the Černín Palace and the delightful façade of the Loreto Church. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving c. 4.15pm.