Albert Einstein, one of the most important scientists of all time, was very fond of Prague. He loved watching the Vltava River and Prague bridges from the windows of his apartment, and often visited Café Louvre, where you can still find pencils and notepads on the tables. These were for intellectuals to jot down their thoughts. This city full of inspiration will welcome and excite you, as it did many personalities throughout the world’s intellectual history. Einstein was known for his love of music and his favourite violin composers were Bach and Mozart. He used to play at Berta Fantová’s salon in the house U Bílého jednorožce (At the White Unicorn) on Old Town Square, which often hosted philosophical and literary debates among Prague’s bohemians – German-speaking Jewish intellectuals. In the drawing room, he would meet the likes of Franz Kafka and Max Brod, with whom he later corresponded. Incidentally, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s close friend Josefína Dušková, for whom he composed several pieces, was born in the house At the White Unicorn. Five hours a week in the morning, Einstein taught physics at the Clementinum, where exactly 124 years earlier, Mozart had succumbed to the beauty of the Mirror Chapel and played there with considerable pleasure. Einstein taught and researched in the German division of Charles University, whose rector in the year of Einstein’s birth was Ernst Mach. Einstein built on Mach’s work in experimental physics, and his colleague was none other than Mach’s former assistant Georg Alexander Pick, with whom he liked to consult on mathematical problems and listen to his stories about Mach. Pick also advised Einstein to describe gravity using Riemann geometry, the mathematical apparatus in which Einstein eventually formulated the general theory of relativity. His seminars on theoretical physics were held in Viničná Street in the Albertov neighbourhood on Fridays from eight o’clock in the evening. Interestingly, his students included three women in all three semesters: Emma Becker, Helene Nothmann-Zuckerkandl and Hedwig Robitschek. Rather a strange thing in its time. Einstein was delighted by his first full professorship at the newly founded Institute of Theoretical Physics, although he often mentioned in his letters that he was “working like a horse”. This may be why it was here that he achieved a major advance towards the general theory of relativity that made him famous, for it was in Prague that he calculated the effect of the gravitational field on the curvature of the path of light rays. By the time he left the Czech metropolis in 1912, he already suspected that gravity could bend not only time but also space. He formulated the equations three years later in Berlin. His wife Mileva persuaded him to leave Prague and return to Zurich. He only returned to Prague one more time, already divorced, in 1921. In the same year, he won the Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect. If you would like to imagine Einstein’s life in Prague, check out the TV series Genius, directed by Oscar winner Ron Howard, where he is brilliantly portrayed by Geoffrey Rush. Or take a walk in Einstein’s footsteps in person.