🇨🇿 Czech Republic
Prague
Prague (Praha — the "Mother of Cities" according to Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who transformed it into the largest city in Europe in the 14th century) is the best-preserved medieval city in Europe: the only major city that escaped both the Baroque rebuilding of the 17th–18th centuries AND the bombing of the Second World War (it was liberated by the Red Army in May 1945 with its cathedral, castle, Jewish Quarter and Charles Bridge intact). The result is a layered city where Gothic, Baroque, Art Nouveau, Cubist (Prague has the finest Cubist architecture in the world) and Communist-era architecture coexist without contradiction, and where the Vltava River curls beneath the castle hill and medieval bridges as it has for 1,000 years. Prague is also one of the cheapest capitals in Central Europe, has the finest beer tradition in the world (Pilsner Urquell was invented in Bohemia in 1842), and the most beautiful main square in Europe — the Old Town Square with its 600-year-old Astronomical Clock.