Prague’s Honest Guide creates new tourist attraction – four ‘selfie poles’ at city’s outer limits

Prague’s Honest Guide has built a new tourist attraction — four concrete poles marking the furthest compass points in the Czech capital.

Janek Rubeš, known as the Honest Guide in a series of YouTube videos, points out scams and traps that tourists face such as unfair exchange outlets, dishonest taxi drivers and those overpriced candy shops. He also points out hidden attractions, such as doorless elevators that don’t stop and affordable eateries.

But the huge drop in tourism, especially in the city center, has caused him to have to be more creative to find topics.

In his most recent video, he makes four concrete pillars marked with the initial letters for the Czech words for the compass points: S for north (sever), J for south (jih), Z for west (západ) and V for east (východ), plus the text “pól prahy", meaning “Prague pole.”

The text below the video includes a link to a Google map showing the approximate locations of the poles. The idea behind the poles is to encourage people to keep social distancing.

Rubeš was also recently behind a project to take the metal from the so-called love locks that people put on fences or railings near tourist attractions downtown and melt it into a bell for the Church of St. Gallen (Kostel sv. Havla). Money to cast the bell in Austria was raised via crowdsourcing. The finished bell arrived in Prague in September.