List of people from Prague

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.

Portrait of Rudolf II

Portrait of a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Monument to Franz Kafka (Prague, August 2004)

Art novo picture of Alfons Mucha

The arts

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) — composer; some of his best opera successes were during his time in Prague
• Hans Hampel (1822–1884) — composer
• Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884) — composer; lived and died in Prague
• Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) — composer; lived most of his life in Prague
• Bedřich Münzberger (1828–1946) - architect
• Josef Václav Myslbek (1848–1922) — sculptor; born in Prague and creator of the Wenceslas Monument in Prague's Wenceslas Square
• Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) — composer; studied in Prague
• Alfons Mucha (1860–1939) — painter and decorative artist; spent last decades of his life in Prague
• Jože Plečnik (1872–1957) — Slovene architect; built several churches and parts of the Prague Castle
• Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) — poet; born and studied in Prague
• Emmy Destinn (1878–1930) — operatic soprano; born in Prague
• Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923) — writer, humorist and satirist; lived in Prague for most of his life, described the city in many stories
• Franz Kafka (1883–1924) — German-language fiction writer; born in Prague
• Karel Čapek (1890–1938) — writer; lived and died in Prague
• Jaroslav Seifert (1901–1986) — poet and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1984); lived in Prague
• Vladimír Holan (1905–1980) — poet; born, lived and died in Prague
• Jan Werich (1905–1980) — actor, singer, playwright, writer; born, lived and died in Prague
• Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997) — writer; lived and died in Prague
• Lída Baarová (1914–2000) — actress; lived and died in Prague
• Jiří Suchý (born 1931) — actor, singer, playwright, writer; born and lives in Prague
• Milan Kundera (born 1929) — writer; studied, lectured at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague
• Miloš Forman (born 1932) — film director, actor and screenwriter — won the Academy Award for Best Director for his feature films Amadeus (1984) and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975); studied and lived in Prague
• Jan Saudek (born 1935) — art photographer; born and lives in Prague
• Václav Havel (1936–2011) — dramatist, writer and politician — President of Czechoslovakia (its last; 1989–1992); and President of the Czech Republic (its first; 1993–2003); born and lived in Prague
• Jiří Menzel (born 1938) — film director (his first feature film, Closely Watched Trains (1966) won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film); born in Prague
• Karel Gott (born 1939) — singer; lives in Prague
• Ivan Kral (born 1948) — guitarist, singer, record producer and film director; born in Prague
• Robert Vano (born 1948) — art photographer; lives in Prague
• Zuzana Navarová (1959–2004) — singer; lived and died in Prague
• Karel Roden (born 1962) — actor; lives in Prague
• Jiří Růžek (born 1967) — art photographer; lives in Prague
• Stefan Kisyov (born 1963)- novelist; lives in Prague
• Gene Deitch (born 1924) - American-born animator; lives in Prague

Monarchs

• 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

• Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) — astronomer; spent end of life near Prague
• 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
• Albert Einstein (1879–1955) — physicist, served as professor at the German part of the Charles University in Prague (1911–1912)
• 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

In sports

• Pavel Nedvěd (born 1972) — football midfielder; played for Dukla Prague (1991–1992) and Sparta Prague (1993–1996)
• Martina Navratilova (born 1956) - Tennis player; born in Prague
• František Plánička (1904–1996) — football goalkeeper, captain of the Czechoslovakia national football team
• Tomáš Rosický (born 1980) — football midfielder; born in Prague
• Emil Zátopek (1922–2000) — athlete; lived and died in Prague

Other fields

• Karel Baxa (1863–1938) — politician; mayor of Prague for almost two decades
• Charles Fried (1935) - United States Solicitor General, 1985-89.
• 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
• František Křižík (1847–1941) — inventor, electrical engineer and entrepreneur — the main-belt asteroid 5719 Křižík was named in his honor; 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 substantial part of life
• Jan Patočka (1907–1977) — philosopher; born, lived and died in Prague
• Jan Žižka (circa 1360–1424) — general and Hussite leader; participated in start of the rebellion in Prague, later defended it against Crusaders