Holešovice is the industrial quarter that went creative without losing the grit. A river bend of warehouses, sidings, and apartment blocks on a strict grid — and inside the brick, some of the best art in Prague. Three kilometres, no hills, all texture.
Start at Vltavská and walk up to the Veletržní palác, the functionalist trade-fair palace of 1928, now the National Gallery's modern and contemporary holdings. The building is the first exhibit: a glass-and-concrete liner run aground in Holešovice, with an atrium you could fly a plane through. The Mucha Slav Epic has shown here, though the canvases come and go.
From there the grid is yours. The cafés around Dukelských hrdinů are where the neighbourhood actually lives; stop for one. Then north-east to DOX, a factory turned contemporary-art gallery with a wooden airship on the roof and shows that argue with you. Drop back south through the Holešovická tržnice — the old market halls, gloriously unfinished — and finish at Nádraží Holešovice for the metro.
