Prague gears up for the next twenty years
Words Julie O’Shea Photos Tim White
Over the last two decades Prague has seamlessly morphed from unpredictable wild child of the Eastern Bloc to one of the world’s top travel destinations. While the Czech capital has poured time and money into modernisation – dozens of high-end developments, shops and restaurants have poured in since the Velvet Revolution – its carefully preserved medieval charm is the city’s most lucrative asset and will continue to astound for years to come.
During those euphoric, crazy days of the early 1990s, when the borders first reopened, young, awestruck backpackers were coming for the cheap beers and thrills of this beautiful, unexplored terrain. Today, Prague has made a name for itself on many different fronts. Visitors still come for the cheap beer. (The city’s popular beer festival, in May this year, offers a chance to sample the country’s top brews.) But lagers aren’t the only things drawing the crowds here. The city is considered one of Europe’s pre-emptive musical and cultural capitals; its seasonal music festivals and stage shows attracting talent from all over the world.
The city’s quick rise to the top caught many by surprise.
"I never really seriously believed it would happen. It seemed communism would be here forever," says Jiří Pehe, a well-known Czech political analyst who was 13 years old when the Soviets rolled their tanks into Prague, beginning an oppressive regime that no one really believed would ever come to an end.
Jiří remembers how in his youth he appreciated the city’s possibilities. "I could see how sidewalk cafés and shops could fit in here. Prague had potential, it was obvious. Prague is very, very beautiful. It speaks to you." But the city was also locked behind the Iron Curtain; its culture, history and beauty cruelly hidden from the rest of the world. When Jiří was convinced things would not change, he made the decision to escape, riding across the border in the trunk of an old Citröen in the early 1980s.
In November 1989, Jiří, then living in Munich, was shocked to hear a revolution had broken out on the streets of Prague. "It was amazing," he says. "Everything was changing so quickly; everything was in total flux."
Sometimes it’s hard to believe that 20 years have elapsed.
"Prague has been elevated to the league of places you have to visit,” Jiří observes, seated comfortably in his quiet fifth-floor office at New York University’s Prague Centre, where he’s been director for several years. But he has reservations. “I think Prague has exhausted its initial potential, which was based on the fact that, although wonderful, it had not been easily accessible to tourists for 40 years. Now, it needs to do more if wants to remain a top tourist destination.
“It’s a different type of tourist that is coming to Prague today – the ‘serious’ tourists,” says Jiří. These are the ones who come to study the spellbinding landscape and dynamic arts culture that arose in the 1960s, with plays from dissidents such as Václav Havel and Pavel Kohout.
The capital, which landed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1992, has seen a rise of big business over the years, making residents worry that capitalism would one day ruin their beloved city. “A lot of the city’s magic came from it being decrepit and not fully developed,” Jiří argues.
Marcela Vesecká, for one, sees hope in the city’s upgrade efforts. Marcela was finishing her studies at Charles University when the city was seized by the Russians. “I think people forget what it looked like before the Revolution,” she says. “I would say Prague was pretty grey then. But there have been so many new things done here; so many repairs.” Sitting at a desk in her empty kindergarten classroom at the International School of Prague, where she’s taught for more than 40 years, Marcela remembers when large-scale stores and restaurants first started filling up the empty buildings around the centre.
“There is more life here now,” she says. “It looks like commercialism, but it shows that Czech culture is evolving, which has to happen if the city wants to compete with western Europe. I don’t mind. Some people do, I don’t.”
Still, as Marcela points out, the changes here are happening “in a milder way” than in other European capitals. Here, there is a fine mix of old and new that isn’t easy to find in other cities. “They are really taking care of the historical buildings here,” she says. “Some places never change.”
Indeed, Prague is a city of ghosts. There are some corners that appear lost in history: the curious gilded molding of a store front, the faded lettering of a bank building, an unusual street lamp, a graffiti-laden wall. These gems are hidden all over the city. While modernisation was inevitable – residents squawked when Frank Gehry’s Dancing House (or Tančící dům) went up along the riverbank in 1996, and the now iconic Žižkov TV Tower had brought equal displeasure in 1992 – Old World Prague is still within arm’s reach, or at most a tram or metro ride away.
“Tourists coming here now follow the guidebooks,” Jiří quips. “They all follow the same routes.”
There are, of course, the must-sees – Charles Bridge, Prague Castle, Old Town Square and the majestic National Museum that anchors the south end of Wenceslas Square – but there are also those places that hardly ever get mentioned in the guidebooks; little nooks that are uniquely Prague. The quaint alleyways and small houses of the New World (“Nový Svět” in Czech), built behind the castle grounds in the 16th century, will make visitors feel as though they’ve been transported back in time. And the entrance to the walled Vojan Gardens, down a crooked street in Lesser Town, is easy to miss, but once inside, this former 13th-century pear orchard is a delightful little sanctuary, home to a couple of peacocks and frequented by locals, looking for a quiet place to read or nap.
Long-term residents who have lived through the dark days of communism only to watch Prague blossom over the last 20 years, predict the city’s star power will never fade.
“There is no city that has been better preserved than Prague,” enthuses Gene Deitch, an Academy Award-winning cartoon animator (Tom & Jerry is among his credits) from California who’s been living here since 1959 and has a studio in the region. “Prague is a cultural delight. Everything’s not as it seems. It’s a town of layers.”
It’s these layers that attracted so many here in the first place.
Take, for instance, Val Levy, an American who arrived in Prague in 1967 with her husband Alan, a writer, and two young daughters. The plan was to stay a year while Alan finished co-writing a musical away from the distractions of New York. But when the time was up, they’d fallen in love with city and opted to say until they were expelled in 1971, following Alan pieces about the short-lived Prague Spring reforms in the International Herald Tribune.
They settled in Vienna, only to return to their beloved city after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Alan passed away in 2004, but Val continues to live there.
“I just felt like I was home. It just felt like this is where we belong,” Val says. “Everyone’s in love with this city. Who isn’t?”
THE HOTSPOTS
Vojan Gardens (Vojanovy sady)
U Lužického semináøe, Prague 1
New World (Nový Svìt)
Nový Svìt, Prague 1 Tram No. 22 to the stop Brusnice
Dancing House (Tanèící dùm)
Rašínovo nábøeží 80, Prague 2
Žižkov TV Tower
Mahlerovy sady 1, Prague 3
The Old Jewish Cemetery
U staré školy 1, www.jewishmuseum.cz, Prague 1
GENE’S TIP: “I just love walking around Prague. I don’t want to single anything out, but the thing that everyone should see is the Jewish Cemetery.”
Ristorante Pizzeria KOGO Havelská
Havelská 27 Prague 1, +420 224 210 259, www.kogo.cz JIØÍ’S TIP: “This restaurant still retains some of the mystery of Prague.”
THE 2010 TO-DO LIST
Prague Easter Markets
20 March – 11 April Stalls will be set up along Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square, displaying hand-crafted goods, hand-painted Easter eggs, barbequed sausages and ice-cold beer in buckets.
Prague Half Marathon
27 March www.praguemarathon.com
Spring International Music Festival
12 May – 6 June www.prague-spring.net
Czech Beer Festival
14 – 30 May www.ceskypivnifestival.cz
2010 FIFA World Cup
11 June – 11 July There’ll be TV screens in the Old Town Square, though they haven’t qualified.
Prague Proms
Classical Music Festival 11 July – 1 August. www.pragueproms.cz
