Prague Has the Second-Highest Density of Bars in the World

Oft-repeated anecdote: Prague’s Žižkov district has the highest density of bars in the world.

This may (or may not) be true, but one thing is for sure: there are a lot of pubs and bars in Žižkov. And a lot of bars in Prague as a whole.

We wanted to know just how true the anecdote might be. Gathering statistics for individual districts across the globe might be difficult, but data for major cities as a whole is readily available.

So what city really does have the highest density of bars in the world?

London topped the list with a whopping 1,327 bars. Tokyo came in second, with 955 bars, and New York was third, with 875 bars. On this list, Prague came in sixth, with a total of 601 bars, also trailing Barcelona and Madrid in Spain.

Of course, London, Tokyo, and New York are also some of the biggest cities in the world, with populations that dwarf that of the Czech capital. Per capita, the numbers of bars per person, Prague would be on top – and probably on top of most other cities, too.

Well, we crunched the numbers: and going by the number of bar listings on TripAdvisor and 2016-17 population estimates for the top 100 cities in the Alpha Insurance study, Prague came in with…

With a population of about 392,000 and a total of 198 bars, Mardi Gras destination New Orleans just edges out Prague for bragging rights for the highest density of bars in the world. Of course, a lot of the bars in the Big Easy cater to tourists – – but the same could be said for a number of the bars and pubs in Prague’s city center.

It’s a bit of a cheat, but U.S. locales that cater to tourists – and in some cases, alcohol-focused tourists – took three of the top six positions on the list. New Orleans, Las Vegas, and Orlando all have resident populations that are only a fraction of many large cities, but high levels of tourists that boost their number of accommodating bars.

Dublin placed third behind Prague in bar density, while Manchester and Glasgow in the UK also featured among the top 10.

Going by per-capita rates of bars-per-person, these are the world’s top 10 cities with the highest density of bars: