0:00km 0.00
Keep your music.Know what you run past.
Run with your own playlist. When a building worth knowing comes into view, your music dips and a voice tells you what it is. Then the track comes back.
Hear how little it talks
The run above skips ahead between stories. These 78 seconds play at real speed, at km 0.7 near Výtoň.
0:00 / 1:18
- 1
It watches an 80° wedge in front of you, up to 600 m out.
- 2
When a building comes into view, it checks what stands in between. Other buildings can hide it. A hill can lift it into view.
- 3
The music drops 14 dB and a voice tells you where to look and one fact. That takes 4 to 14 seconds.
- 4
Then your track comes back, and the next story waits at least 40 seconds.
It only talks about what you can actually see
The prototype checks every second of the run against 9,174 buildings, their heights and the ground under them.
Keep almost all of the run for your music
16 stories in 55 minutes add up to 2 min 20 s of voice. On the way back there's little new to say, so it stays quiet for 13 minutes straight.
Walking? Point your phone
On foot, it follows the compass. On a 1.2 km walk from Charles Bridge to Old Town Square it told 26 stories in 15 minutes, 3 of them because the phone pointed there.
Read every line it said on this run
Each line is written from its Wikipedia or Wikidata entry and links back to it.
- 1Palacký Bridge
- 2Limnigraph in Výtoň
- 3Basilica of St Peter and St Paul
- 4Cubist triple house
- 5St Michael's, Podolí
- 6Podolí Waterwork
- 7Podolí Swimming Stadium
- 8Dvorce Bridge
- 9Barrandov Bridge
- 10Ledárny Braník
- 11Barrandov Terraces
- 12Evangelical church
- 13Rotunda of Saint Martin
- 14Vyšehrad
- 15Podskalí Customs House
- 16Dancing House
1km 0.211:10
Palacký Bridge
On your right. Palacký Bridge. It opened in 1876, and it's one of the oldest working bridges in Prague after Charles Bridge.
Wikipedia ↗2km 0.764:09
Limnigraph in Výtoň
Ahead. That small building by the water is a limnigraph. It measures the level of the Vltava and keeps a record of it over time.
Wikipedia ↗3km 0.904:57
Basilica of St Peter and St Paul
On your left, up on the hill. The Basilica of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. It's neo-Gothic, and it stands inside the Vyšehrad fortress.
Wikipedia ↗4km 1.045:45
Cubist triple house
Ahead. The cubist triple house by Josef Chochol, built in 1912 and 1913: three family houses in one block.
Wikipedia ↗
Read all 16 lines
5km 1.417:45
St Michael's, Podolí
On your left. The little church of Saint Michael in Podolí began as a late Romanesque building in the early twelve hundreds. The wooden belfry beside it is baroque.
Wikipedia ↗6km 1.819:59
Podolí Waterwork
Ahead. Podolí Waterworks, built from 1925 to 1929 to a design by Antonín Engel. Since 2003 it's only a backup water source, and a museum of Prague's water supply.
Wikipedia ↗7km 2.5313:56
Podolí Swimming Stadium
On your left. Podolí swimming stadium, 1965, by Richard Podzemný. It sits in a former quarry, right under the cliff, and it's been a protected monument since 2020.
Wikipedia ↗8km 2.7615:11
Dvorce Bridge
On your right. Dvorce Bridge, by the studios Tubes and Atelier 6. It's the newest bridge on this stretch of the river.
9km 4.1522:49
Barrandov Bridge
On your right. Barrandov Bridge. A road bridge from 1983, designed by Karel Filsak.
10km 4.8026:24
Ledárny Braník
On your right. The Braník ice houses. Josef Kovařovič designed them.
11km 5.1628:23
Barrandov Terraces
On your left, across the river, up on the hill. Barrandov Terraces. A functionalist restaurant with a view, by Max Urban, 1927 to 1931. The idea came from the Cliff House near San Francisco.
Wikipedia ↗12km 5.7531:37
Evangelical church
On your right. The evangelical church in Braník stands in an old limestone quarry. It went up after the Second World War as a temporary prayer house, designed by Pavel Bareš.
Wikipedia ↗13km 8.1845:00
Rotunda of Saint Martin
On your right, up on the hill. The Rotunda of Saint Martin, from the eleventh century. It's the oldest rotunda in Prague.
14km 8.3245:47
Vyšehrad
Ahead, up on the hill. Vyšehrad. A fort, probably founded in the tenth century. Dvořák, Smetana, Karel Čapek and Alphonse Mucha are buried up there.
Wikipedia ↗15km 8.9649:18
Podskalí Customs House
On your right. The old Podskalí customs house. It's Gothic, from around 1500. Tolls were collected here on timber floated down the river, and today it's a museum of the raftsmen.
Wikipedia ↗16km 9.9154:32
Dancing House
On your right. The Dancing House. Vlado Milunić designed it with Frank Gehry, and it was finished in 1996. Its nickname is Ginger and Fred.
Wikipedia ↗
Want to hear your own run?
There's no app yet, only a working prototype
Every map, number and sound on this page comes from it. The route and the buildings are from OpenStreetMap, the ground from EU‑DEM, the facts from Wikipedia and Wikidata, the voice from macOS. The music was made for this page.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Terrain: EU‑DEM via OpenTopoData · Facts: Wikipedia and Wikidata
