Prague, the capital of today's Czech Republic, has been for over a thousand years the centre and the biggest city of the Czech lands. Notable people who were born or died, studied, lived or saw their success in Prague are listed below.

The arts

Monument to Franz Kafka (Prague, August 2004)

Portrait of a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

A portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke painted two years after his death by Leonid Pasternak

An oil portrait of Smetana, 1854, by Geskel Saloman

• Auguste Hauschner (1850-1924) — German writer, born in Prague
• H. G. Adler (1910–1988) — German-language writer; born and lived in Prague
• Filip Albrecht (born 1977) — lyricist, film producer, writer; lives in Prague
• Jana Andrsová (1939–2023) — actress and ballerina; born and lives in Prague
• Lída Baarová (1914–2000) — actress; lived and died in Prague
• Max Brod (1884–1968) — German-language writer; born and lived in Prague
• Karel Čapek (1890–1938) — writer; lived and died in Prague
• Gene Deitch (1924–2020) — American-born animator; lives in Prague
• Emmy Destinn (1878–1930) — operatic soprano; born in Prague
• Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) — composer; lived most of his life in Prague
• Miloš Forman (1932–2018) — film director, won twice Academy Award for Best Director; studied and lived in Prague
• Karel Gott (1939–2019) — singer; lived in Prague
• Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923) — writer, humorist and satirist; lived in Prague for most of his life, described the city in many stories
• Václav Havel (1936–2011) — dramatist, writer and politician; President of Czechoslovakia and Czech republic (its first; 1993–2003); born and lived in Prague
• Maxim Havlíček — painter; born in Prague
• Vladimír Holan (1905–1980) — poet; born, lived and died in Prague
• Jiří Hošta (born 1978) — writer, essayist, photographer; lives in Prague
• Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997) — writer; lived and died in Prague
• Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) — composer; studied in Prague
• Fanny Janauschek (1830–1904) — actress; migrated to the United States in 1867
• Franz Kafka (1883–1924) — German-language fiction writer; born and lived in Prague
• Tomas Kalnoky (born 1980) — guitarist, singer; born in Prague
• Egon Erwin Kisch (1885–1948) – German-language journalist and writer; born, lived, and died in Prague
• Stefan Kisyov (born 1963) — novelist; lives in Prague
• Daria Klimentová (born 1971) - ballet dancer; born and raised in Prague
• Paul Kornfeld (1889–1942) — German-language playwright and novelist; born and lived in Prague
• Ivan Kral (1948–2020) — guitarist, singer, record producer and film director; born in Prague
• Milan Kundera (born 1929) — writer; studied, lectured at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague
• Leopold Eugen Měchura (1804–1870) — composer
• Jiří Menzel (1938-2020) — film director (his first feature film, Closely Watched Trains (1966) won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film); born in Prague
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) — composer; some of his best opera successes were during his time in Prague
• Alfons Mucha (1860–1939) — Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist; spent last decades of his life in Prague
• Josef Václav Myslbek (1848–1922) — sculptor; born in Prague and creator of the Wenceslas Monument in Prague's Wenceslas Square
• Zuzana Navarová (1959–2004) — singer; lived and died in Prague
• Jože Plečnik (1872–1957) — Slovene architect; built several churches and parts of the Prague Castle
• Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) — German-language poet; born and studied in Prague
• Karel Roden (born 1962) — actor; lives in Prague
• Jan Saudek (born 1935) — art photographer; born and lives in Prague
• Jaroslav Seifert (1901–1986) — poet and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1984); lived in Prague
• Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884) — composer; lived and died in Prague
• Kamila Špráchalová (born 1971) — stage and television actress
• Jiří Suchý (born 1931) — actor, singer, playwright, writer; born and lives in Prague
• Bertha von Suttner (1843–1914) — novelist, pacifist activist and writer, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (1905)
• Vladimír Svozil (born 1966) — painter
• Johannes Urzidil (1896–1970) — German-language writer; born and lived in Prague, described the city in many stories (The Lost Beloved, 1956, Prague Triptych, 1960)
• Marja Vallila (1950–2018) — sculptor
• Robert Vano (born 1948) — art photographer; lives in Prague
• Sonja Vectomov (born 1979) — composer, musician; lives in Prague
• Felix Weltsch (1884–1964) — German-language writer; born and lived in Prague
• Robert Weltsch (1891–1982) — German-language journalist; born and lived in Prague
• Franz Werfel (1890–1945) — German-language writer; born and lived in Prague
• Jan Werich (1905–1980) — actor, singer, playwright, writer; born, lived and died in Prague
• David Woodard (born 1964) — American-born writer and businessman; lives in Prague
• Walter Trier (1890–1951) — illustrator; born in Prague

Monarchs

Portrait of Emperor Rudolf II as Vertumnus by Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Jaroslav Heyrovský, recipient of the Nobel Prize in 1959 for his discovery and development of the polarographic methods of analysis

• Charles IV (1316–1378) — Holy Roman Emperor; under his rule the Charles University in Prague was established and the Charles Bridge was built; made the city his main seat of government
• Rudolf II (1552–1612) — Holy Roman Emperor; made the city the capital of the Habsburg Empire; attracted both scientists and charlatans to Prague

The sciences

• Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848) — mathematician, logician, philosopher, Catholic theologian
• Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) — astronomer; spent end of life near Prague
• Carl Ferdinand Cori (1896–1984) — biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1947)
• Gerty Cori (1896–1957) — biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1947)
• Karl Deutsch (1912–1992) — social scientist, political scientist
• Albert Einstein (1879–1955) — physicist, served as professor at the German part of the Charles University in Prague (1911–1912)^[1]
• Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) — inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist, studied at Charles University in Prague (1880)^[2]
• Jaroslav Heyrovský (1890–1967) — chemist; inventor of the polarographic method and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1959); born, lived most of his life and died in Prague
• Antonín Holý (1936–2012) — chemist, pharmacologist
• Jan Janský (1873–1921) — serologist, neurologist, psychiatrist
• Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) — astronomer; in 1601, he succeeded Tycho Brahe as imperial mathematician and the next eleven years lectured for several years in Prague and published his paper on Doppler effect there
• Enoch Heinrich Kisch (1841-1918), balneologist

In sports

• František Getreuer (1906–1945), swimmer and Olympic water polo player, killed in Dachau concentration camp
• Radko Gudas (born 1990), ice hockey player
• Ladislav Hecht (1909–2004), Czechoslovak-American tennis player
• Tomáš Hertl (born in 1993), ice hockey player; born and raised in Prague
• Martina Navratilova (born 1956), tennis player; 18 times Grand Slam champion, born in Prague
• Pavel Nedvěd (born 1972), footballer; Ballon d'Or 2003 winner; lived and played in Prague
• Felix Pipes (1887–1983), tennis player, Olympic medalist
• František Plánička (1904–1996), footballer, captain of the Czechoslovakia national football team
• Tomáš Rosický (born 1980), footballer; born in Prague
• Jan Soukup (born 1979), karateka and kickboxer; born in Prague
• Daniel Vladař (born 1997), ice hockey goaltender, born in Prague
• Jakub Vrána (born 1996), ice hockey player; born and raised in Prague
• Václav Žáček (born 1978), personal watercraft extreme sports athlete; born in Prague
• Emil Zátopek (1922–2000), athlete, Olympic winner; lived and died in Prague

Other fields

František Křižík

• Vladimir Balthasar (1897–1978), entomologist, naturalist and ornithologist
• Karel Baxa (1863–1938), politician; mayor of Prague for almost two decades
• Adolph Aloys von Braun (1818–1904), diplomat and statesman
• Jan van der Croon (1600–1665), Dutch soldier; military commander of Prague 1652–1665
• Charles Fried (1935), United States Solicitor General, 1985–89
• Rabbi Manis Friedman (1946), Prague-born American Chabad Rabbi, Author, and Lecturer
• Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942), Nazi general and protector; assassinated in Prague during Operation Anthropoid while serving as governor of the occupied country
• Jan Hus (1369–1415), priest, philosopher, reformer; most-important preaching done in Prague
• Jerome of Prague (1379–1416), scholastic philosopher, theologian, reformer, and professor
• Gershom ben Solomon Kohen (d. 1544), early printer of Hebrew books and founder of the Gersonides (printers)
• Pyotra Krecheuski (1879–1928), Belarusian statesman and president of the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in exile; died in Prague
• František Křižík (1847–1941), inventor, electrical engineer and entrepreneur set up his company in Prague
• Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1525–1609), Talmudic scholar, Jewish mystic and philosopher; lived most of his life in Prague
• Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937), philosopher, politician; lived in Prague for a substantial part of his life
• Jan Patočka (1907–1977), philosopher; born, lived and died in Prague
• Vasil Zacharka (1877–1943), Belarusian statesman and the second president of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in exile; died in Prague
• Jan Žižka (circa 1360–1424), general and Hussite leader; participated in start of the rebellion in Prague, later defended the city against Crusaders in the first anti-Hussite crusade of the Hussite Wars

Notes