Prague Guide

It should be the city centre and the main attraction of the capital. Instead, it is quite dilapidated and noisy, and after dusk it is better not to venture there at all. This is what Wenceslas Square is like. Every day hundreds of drug doses are sold there, and it has probably the most brothels of the whole of Prague! However after years the decision has been finally made to carry out a thorough reconstruction of the square.

The St. Václav statue and the National Museum. These are the two main historic attractions, for which thousands of keen tourists come to Wenceslas Square during the day. Hashish, cocaine, pervitin, heroin. These drugs attract people here at night. “Wenceslas Square is the largest open drug market in the Czech Republic. Every day some 500 to 800 people buy a drug there. Eighty percent of them are Czech people; the rest are Slovaks and Russians,” stated the officer of Sananim, an organisation which helps the drug addicts. “During one shift we replace up to 2000 needles.”

But drugs are not the only problem of Wenceslas Square. “Right on the square and in the side-alleys there are some 26 brothels,” stated the city police director. But to convict the Afro-Americans who lure foreigners to “cabarets” is often beyond the abilities of the police.

Over two hours spent in the square, the policemen revoked the licence of one taxi driver and ousted several homeless people off the benches. “But if the person is not a wanted criminal and has proper documents, they can only ask him to take their feet down off the bench.”