Visit the Terezin concentration camp from Prague

Visit Terezin from Prague. Far from being a tourist attraction like others, the visit to the concentration camp is absolutely to do if you come to discover Prague and its region.

Terezín's concentration camp is a place in charge of our history. It is indeed an ancient fortress that was transformed into a concentration camp under the Nazi occupation of the former Czechoslovakia. From Prague , it is possible to go to Terezin to make a guided tour of this ghostly city and thus apprehend all the horror of this human drama.

A tragedy behind the walls of the Terezín fortress

Located 1 hour drive from the city of Prague, not far from the city of Litoměřice, is the almost ghost town of Terezín, a fortified city that served during the Second World War of ghetto for the Jews of Bohemian and Moravian.

The Terezín camp not only welcomed the deported Jews but was also used as a transit camp and as a working camp within this former fortress belonging to Marie-Thérèse of Austria. It is important to know that the concentration camp in Terezín received nearly 150,000 deported men and women and that a quarter perished, mainly because of very difficult living conditions. 88.000 people were finally deported to Auschwitz and other extermination camps. At the end of the war, only 17,000 Jews who passed through the Terezín ghetto survived.

The Terezín concentration camp is visited through several places and monuments inside the enclosure, starting with the "Magdebourg" boat where a few rooms have been reconstituted to show visitors the living conditions of the prisoners.

The Ghetto Museum helps to shed light on the history and struggle of each of the prisoners in this place. This museum, in addition to its permanent exhibition, regularly offers temporary exhibitions on the history of the camp, traced through archival films and documents.

And finally, small fortress , which served as a prison for the political workers of whole Europe and mainly those of Czechoslovakia, and this from the Austro-Hungarian period.

How to get to Terezin from Prague?

Two solutions are available to you: go by your own means, i.e. by car, bus or train from Prague. Or book your visit with a Prague-based agency. The first solution will cost you almost twice as much as the second, but will be less convenient for you. So it’s up to you to see: do you prefer to organize your day yourself or take an agency that will take care of everything?

1) Visit Terezin by your own means

Whether by car, bus or train, you can visit "only" the Terezín concentration camp and its various buildings.

If you have your own car or rental car, you must take the highway to Dresden on the main E55 motorway or Litoměřice . Look for the exit panels for Terezin. The duration of the trip is about one hour.

If you intend to go to Terezin by bus, there are about ten buses leaving each day from the Bus station Florenc . Learn at the station’s reception, but generally buses to Terezin depart from docks 16 and 17. It is also necessary to plan about one hour of road. The price for a trip is 90 CZK (3,30€). So much for the return.

You can also go to the Terezin camp by train from Prague. You must take a train at the Prague-Masaryk Station (Praha Masarykovo Nádraží) and stop at Nové Kopisty. There, you might find a cab to get you to the camp. Otherwise, you will have to walk 3 km. The price of a trip to Terezin by train is 117 CZK (4,30€).

To know the bus and train schedules for Terezin from Prague, you can use the site jizdnirady.idnes.cz .

Although it happens, don’t expect to leave after 14h in Prague because Terezin’s visit lasts between 2 and 3 hours on site. If you want to discover the fortress, camp, museum and city in itself, prefer a departure in the morning.

(2) Visit Terezin to an agency

This is the simplest solution, but it will cost you a little more: Several agencies based in the centre of Prague offer all-inclusive visits to Terezin. You will find these agencies without any problems in the center. The price includes the bus that comes to pick you up at your hotel and the guided tour of the concentration camp.

Simpler yet, you can book everything online to have nothing to prepare, and simply enjoy (follow the button below):

Hourly rates

The guided tours are included in the entrance ticket and are available in several languages for groups of 10 people (in Czech, French, German, English, Spanish, Russian, Italian) and are mainly made on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

The rates are as follows: :

Opening times are as follows :

Main photo credit: Flickr – Eric Gross