Jewish Quarter and Jewish Museum Guided Tour Prague

The Two Inclusions

You get a private professional guide certified by the Jewish Museum, and a €25 entrance fee. The fee is described in the price, not in a site-by-site list. The listing does not name the Jewish Museum circuit ticket, and it does not say whether the Old-New Synagogue admission is covered, even though the highlights say you visit its interior. That matters because the Old-New Synagogue is administered separately by the Jewish Community of Prague. If you need to know exactly what is paid for, message the operator through GetYourGuide before booking.

For comparison, the Jewish Quarter Tour with Tickets at $74 lists admissions to five sites explicitly, and the Private Jewish Quarter Tour at $165.89 per person states that both the Jewish Museum and Old-New Synagogue entrance fees are included.

Meeting and First Stops

You meet the guide at Pařížská 131/28 in Staré Město. The listing has no written meeting-point text beyond the address, so screenshot the map pin when you book. The first short walk of 4 minutes brings you to the Jewish Town Hall for a 5-minute look, then another 4 minutes to the High Synagogue, which sits on the first floor of the Town Hall,, also for 5 minutes.

The Synagogues

From the High Synagogue a 5-minute walk reaches the Old-New Synagogue, the oldest still active house of Jewish prayer in Europe, with 15 minutes inside. Then 3 minutes to the Maisel Synagogue at Maiselova 10, 15 minutes with its exhibits, and another 3 minutes to the Pinkas Synagogue, where the walls carry a memorial to the Bohemian and Moravian Jewish victims of the Nazi persecution, again 15 minutes.

Cemetery and Finish

A 4-minute walk brings you to the Old Jewish Cemetery, the longest stop at 25 minutes, with more than 12,000 tombstones stacked in layers. From there it is 4 minutes to the Klausen Synagogue, 15 minutes, then 4 minutes to the Jewish Ceremonial Hall for a 5-minute stop. The final 4-minute walk ends at the Spanish Synagogue, built in 1868 with a Moorish interior inspired by the Alhambra, for the last 5 minutes of the tour.

The tour finishes there, so plan anything after your visit around that point.

Families with Small Children

The listing says the tour is not suitable for children under 6. If you are travelling with a 4-year-old, this is not your tour. Look at the Small Group Jewish Quarter Walk, a 2.5-hour walk in groups of up to 8 with no age limit stated.

Wheelchair Users

The tour itself is listed as wheelchair accessible and service animals are allowed, but the Jewish Town Hall, the High Synagogue and the Klausen Synagogue are not accessible. That removes three of the nine stops. For an alternative with hotel pickup, the Private Synagogues and Jewish Quarter Tour is priced per group of up to 2 and reviewers mention the pace suits older travellers.

Dress and Bags

The museum's visitor rules refuse exposed arms, shoulders or midriff, swimwear and bare feet, and bags over 30 litres are refused at the entrance. There is no luggage storage at the museum. Bring a small bag or leave luggage at your hotel.

Food, drinks and smoking are banned in all visitor areas.

Saturdays and Jewish Holidays

The museum sites close on Saturdays and on Jewish holidays. One reviewer on a Jewish holiday could not enter anywhere, which turns a paid interior tour into a street walk. Check your date against the closures before you commit, or pick another date.

Budget Travellers

At $81 per person this is a premium listing. If entry is what you actually want and a private guide is not, the Jewish Quarter Ticket costs $51 with a 20-minute introduction and entry to five sites. See the full comparison of Jewish Quarter tours in Prague.

Reaching Pařížská 28

Staroměstská is on metro Line A and tram lines 17 and 18, and it is a 3-minute walk from the museum area. Buses 194 and 207 also stop there. Old Town Square is 5 minutes on foot and Charles Bridge 10 minutes.

The museum advises leaving the car outside the centre. All Jewish Museum tickets are sold at the Visitor Centre at Maiselova 15 if you ever need one separately.

What to Add Before or After

The Jerusalem Synagogue at Jeruzalémská 7 is a synagogue this tour does not include. It is open Sunday to Friday 10:00-17:00, closed Saturdays and Jewish holidays, and adults pay CZK 150 (CZK 135 online), reduced to CZK 100 with a valid Jewish Town ticket. The Franz Kafka Monument by Jaroslav Róna, bronze and 375 cm tall, stands at Dušní and Vězeňská between the Spanish Synagogue and the Church of the Holy Spirit, close to where the tour ends.

A trip to the Terezin memorial is a separate excursion, covered on the Terezin Tour from Prague page. The guide to Jewish Quarter tours in Prague lists the self-guided route too.

From Market Records to the Ten Stops

Jews are recorded at Prague markets in 965 CE. The first pogrom here came in 1096, and in 1389 an estimated 3,000 Jews were murdered in a Passover pogrom. By the early 1700s Jews made up about a quarter of Prague's population. The buildings on your route carry those centuries: the Pinkas Synagogue went up in 1535 for the Horovitz family, the High Synagogue followed in 1568, funded by Mordechai Maisel and built by the Italian Pankratius Roder, and the Maisel Synagogue opened in 1592 on the holiday of Simchat Torah. The Spanish Synagogue is the newcomer, built in 1868 on the site of the Old Shul, demolished in 1867. The Jewish Town Hall dates from the 16th century. For more background on the district and its sights, see Prague Jewish Quarter tours.

The Old Jewish Cemetery was in use from 1439 until the 1780s and holds more than 12,000 tombstones. Graves were stacked in layers, and researchers suggest up to ten layers in places, with some counts reaching twelve. Your 25 minutes there is enough to grasp the scale but not to read it all.

What the Guide's Certification Adds

The badge on this tour means your guide is certified by the Jewish Museum, which runs the synagogues on the route. That matters when a stop raises questions the walls cannot answer, such as the Pinkas Synagogue memorial painted between 1955 and 1960 by Václav Boštík and Jiří John, or the building's closure from 1968 to 1995 before its 2003 reopening after flood repairs. If a private museum-certified walk at a lower price interests you, compare it with the Jewish Quarter Tour with Tickets, a 2.5-hour group walk at $74 per person.

The Golem Story

In the legend, Rabbi Loew made a clay golem to defend the ghetto during the reign of Rudolf II. The creature is animated by a shem, a slip carrying God's name placed in its head or mouth. Removing the aleph from emet, the Hebrew word for truth, leaves met, meaning dead, and switches the golem off.

Historians generally treat the tale as a German literary invention of the early 19th century, and searches of the Old-New Synagogue attic have found nothing. Rabbi Loew still has a physical link on the route: the Klausen Synagogue stands on the site of three 16th-century buildings that included his yeshiva. Guides who cover the legends in depth run tours such as the Inside Jewish Prague Tour, 3 hours at $68.64 per person.

A Five-minute Detour After the Tour

The tour finishes at the Spanish Synagogue. Two minutes away, at the corner of Dušní and Vězeňská streets between the Spanish Synagogue and the Church of the Holy Spirit, stands the Franz Kafka Monument by Jaroslav Róna. It dates from 2003, is bronze, 375 cm tall and weighs 800 kg, and shows Kafka riding on the shoulders of a headless figure from his story Description of a Struggle, published in 1912.

If you would rather explore Josefov on your own another day, the Jewish Quarter Ticket costs $51 per person, is valid for 1 day and includes a 20-minute introduction in English.