The story of this place
Inspired by a members' trip to Paris, the Czech Tourist Club raised this lattice-steel tower on Petřín hill in just four months for the 1891 Jubilee Exhibition. Though only 63.5 metres tall — about a fifth of the Eiffel Tower — its base sits so high above the city that its viewing platform reaches almost the same altitude as the top of its Paris cousin. On clear days the panorama stretches to the forests of Bohemia. A funicular railway, opened the same year, still hauls visitors up the wooded slope past orchards and a mirror maze. During the Nazi occupation the tower's antenna broadcast, and in the Communist era it carried television for decades before restoration.