Havlíčkova 1014/2, Masaryk Station

Masarykovo nádraží is the oldest railway station in Prague. Constructed to receive the first trains from Vienna via Olomouc, the neo-renaissance main building is by Antonin Jungling, with the possible involvement of Viennese court architects Peter de Nobile and Paul Sprenger. The glass-roofed arrivals hall (pictured below) with its cast-iron columns and wooden roof, was added in 1862 at the western end of the main station, and reconstructed in 2011.

Originally called simply ‘Prague Station’, the building was the culmination of the Olomouc to Prague line initiated by the 30-year-old engineer Jan Perner, who was carried in triumph aboard the first steam train to arrive here on 20 August 1845. Alas, one month later, Perner was killed after striking his head on a pole as he leant out of a train window near the town of Choceň.

The station was renamed in honour of the Czechoslovak Republic’s first president, Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, in 1919. Its future is currently a matter of debate. One plan has Masarykovo nádraží as the terminus of a new high-speed link to the airport, while another would see it as the centre of a proposed railway museum.