What is it?

Baba housing estate is a complex of Constructivist villas built in the early 1930s for the Prague intelligentsia and elites of the time. These villas are one of the most expensive pieces of real estate available on Prague market today. It’s a great walk that tells you a lot about Prague’s history and present.

How do I get there?

The obvious and fast way: subway to Hradčanská stop > 131 bus to U Matěje stop
The explorer way: subway to Dejvická and a 30-minute walk
The fun way: train to Praha-Podbaba, and a 25-minute walk

Please note that if you choose to walk, you’ll be walking up a hill in the last leg of the walk.

What’s on the way?

The Dejvice and Bubeneč districts are purely residential and very leafy. Nestled between the Vltava river and the Stromovka park on one side, and the Czech Technical University Campus and the Hanspaulka hill on the other, yet very easily accessible from the city centre via trains, trams or subway, it is one of the most expensive districts in town, often with a small-town feel. Every day can feel like a Sunday, especially walking among the Bubeneč villas occupied by foreign embassies. Here’s some notable buildings or sights:

The International Hotel. Want to see Communist architecture? This monumental „social realism“ structure - which still serves as a hotel today - can be found in most post-Communist capitals (think Warsaw’s Culture Palace), but here it’s comfortably nested behind a hill. This is luxury, late 50s style, and a neighborhood icon.
Stromovka park. Sure, this may be out of the way and will turn your walk into a whole-day affair, but the largest (and newly renovated) park in Prague is a true place of leisure with little ponds, alcoves, shady trees, children’s playgrounds, dog agility courses and loads of joggers or parents with newborns quietly strolling away in the sun.
Czech Technical University campus. If you want to see where Czech civil engineers get their diplomas, head this way. The campus is small but encompasses a variety of interesting buildings, with the modern National Technical Library at the front and centre of it all.
Praha-Dejvice railway station. This is for the train buffs here: the Praha-Dejvice railway station may be relatively small, but it is the oldest in Prague, dating back to 1830s and 1860s. The Bachmačské náměstí square across the street is a great place to unwind with ice-cream from Angelato nearby.
Slavíčkova street. This small street out of the way may not be in your guide book, but trust us - you’ll love the picturesque villas in it.

Can I eat/have coffee there or on the way?

Grabbing a cup of great coffee is easy in Bubeneč, the district at the foot of the Hanspaulka / Baba hill. Get yours at Kafemat, Kavárna Místo, La Forme, mazelab coffee, Kiosek Kafe or Borzoi café, and you won’t make a mistake in any of these. To build up energy, you can get a croissant or a pain au chocolate at La Forme, or the amazing kolache at Kafemat if they have them that day. If you like to pack something to go, the Wine Food market at Československé armády may have a stuffed focaccia to go. Fresh Point Pizza across the street sells cheap pizza slices that are surprisingly satisfying when reheated on the spot. And then there’s Bistro Santinka at the foot of the hill that leads up to Baba, which serves light Italian fare and has a great selection of wines.

The walk

So the walk is easy: you start at the U Matěje bus stop, walk to the Baba Ruin (Zřícenina Baba), and walk back. You start or end with a meal at the amazing U Matěje pub, run by Chef Punčochář, one of the three judges of the Czech Masterchef competition.

The Baba housing estate encompasses 33 buildings built in early 1930s. It is one of six projects of this kind in Central Europe, but Prague’s project was different: the investor had bought the land and approached selected architects and selected clients from Prague’s cultural and financial elites, so that each building was built specifically for a particular client, and usually the villa bears the client’s name. We will not get into details about each house’s architect, purpose or client - this website will does a fantastic job we don’t feel compelled to try to replicate and fail.

What we want to focus instead is two things:

Note the varying degrees of upkeep from pristine to neglected. Also, look at the cars parked in front of the houses. Yes, there will be Porsche SUVs, but also small Skodas, the Czech reasonably-priced car. Yes, this is - despite the location, the renown and the size of the villas and plots around them - a mixed-income neighborhood.

Baba, where villas can command EUR 2 million prices, is the best place to show that the Czech Republic, like most post-Communist countries, have no continuity of wealth, or „old money“. Sure, the original owners were affluent, but after the nationalisation of 1950 and the monetary reform of 1953, that was taken all away and replaced with a system of institutionalised (albeit not entirely real) income equality. And when the villas were given back to the descendants of the original owners in the restitution process of the early 1990s, these descendants did not necessarily come from money. No-one did at that time.

To give you an example: Jan used to work at a law firm, and the family of one of the legal assistants owned one of the villas at Baba. They were all middle class, white and blue collar family that struggled to find money for even the most basic upkeep. But their great grandpa was a prominent artist before the war, and that’s how he got to have the villa.

Now, obviously, this will change as old, middle-income settlers cash in and sell out to new, top-one-percent owners. But for now, you can still enjoy the district as it is today - on one side glitzy and fancy, yet also a tiny bit neglected, with greenery running a bit wild here and there.

The other thing we want to focus on are real estate prices. As you walk along Baba, please note that these houses are well beyond the reach of 99.9% of the local population. Out of curiosity, we went to see a house that was for sale there. It was not one of the 33 original houses, but one of those semi-detached houses built in the 1980s near the U Matěje bus stop. It was relatively small, in need of major remodelling, with a tiny garden and small ceilings (a clear sign of Communist development). It went for 17.5 million CZK (about 700 thousand EUR) and was soon gone. The original villas can start at the double of that.

According to recent surveys, Czechs work the longest to afford their own house or apartment in the entire European Union, and while the Millennials and Generation Z’s have been entirely priced out of the real estate market, so have many older locals. Still, the level of real estate ownership in Prague is astoundingly high - about 80% own while just 20% rent, but that’s because government-held real estate was sold out to the tenants at incredibly low prices in the 90s and early 00s. That was also sadly the last time the general public could easily afford to buy anything in the city or its centre, which may have contributed to the problem - most people in Prague don’t see the prices of real estate as a pressing problem because they already own their own. Only when you come of age or from a different place do you realise how unrealistic these prices can be. (On the other hand, mortgages seem to be relatively cheap and readily available.)

Conclusion

The Baba housing estate is a great destination for a small exploration in Prague - the villa district has a distinctly „Japanese“ flavour with incredibly swell designed buildings, a mixed-income neighborhood vibe, so you don’t feel someone will call the cops on you for walking through Bel Air, and the Baba Ruin offers great views of Bubeneč and Dejvice and the Prague ZOO and the Troja vineyards across the river. And you can see interesting stuff ands eat way along the way. Reserve half of a beautiful day for this, and you’ll be very happy.