Prague Shines in its Second Act

I had just emerged from the Strahov Monastery in Prague, and its elegant, glass-walled, 17th-century cloister, when I came upon a startling sign: Malý Buddha, or “Little Buddha.” I stepped out of the bright midsummer sunshine and down into a much darker, low-ceilinged cave crowded with demon masks and barely discernible Buddhas.

A man emerged from the shadows and introduced himself as Chris Nguyen, the owner of what turned out to be a restaurant. He’d been a student here, he explained, when the Czechs threw off the shackles of Soviet oppression, but by now he’d come to feel that true liberation lay in freeing the mind.

A middle-aged Czech gentleman suddenly appeared in the candlelit chamber and hurried toward a small Buddha-filled chapel in the back, waving sticks of incense. I knew then that Prague 2.0 would be rich in surprises, generating all kinds of global—and countercultural—amazement.

It’s been 35 years since decades of Soviet domination and communist rule ended in what was then Czechoslovakia. Few political events have inspired me as much as the country’s 1989 Velvet Revolution, when a playwright who had been in prison earlier in the year, Václav Havel, was chosen to be president and young artists began flocking to Prague to celebrate its non-violent rebellion.

The Strahov Monastery at sunset. Photo by Seregalsv/Getty Images

In 1993, the country formally split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and Prague consolidated its image as the spiritual home of new beginnings. Now, a third of a century later, I wanted to see how the City of a Hundred Spires might address what I think of as the Apple Conundrum: Once you’ve changed the world, how can you possibly remain ahead of the pack?

For centuries, of course, Prague has drawn visitors seeking old things: a delirious jumble of architectural styles—in which Mozart, Einstein, and Rilke once lived—across the Vltava River from where the huge compound of the Prague Castle broods over the rooftops.

To see how the old was being made forever new, I decided to post up at the capital’s classic design hotel, Hotel Josef, whose sleek glassy spaces sit amid the cobblestoned alleyways and hushed courtyards of Staré Město, or Old Town.

As soon as I stepped inside, a gracious young host at the front desk—Gongchun Wu, from Taiwan—handed me a map he’d drawn of the city and pointed out an electric scooter in the middle of the lobby that I was free to ride to any of the sights featured in his guide.

The astronomical clock on Prague’s Old Town Square. Photo by Harald Nachtmann/Getty Images

Any first-time visitor must sample Prague’s storied treasures before delving deeper, and I was no exception.

On my opening night in the city I walked out to find myself encircled by the baroque, Gothic, and rococo splendors of Old Town Square—an explosion of tropical-colored exclamation marks. Twelve wooden apostles suddenly appeared, high up, parading to mark the hour in the ornate astronomical clock on the south side of the Old Town Hall Tower. Meanwhile, in cafés nearby, large groups of Indian tourists settled in over their pilsners.

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“We have dark humor”

Early the next morning, I made the ascent to the castle to be among the first to step into St. Vitus Cathedral when it opened, just as the light streamed through its stained-glass windows and scattered rainbow reflections across gold-haloed figures on the wall.

By lunchtime, I was crisscrossing the Vltava River and exploring the city on trams, passing tidy flowerbeds along the spotless boulevards and getting out to climb the winding steps in the former Jesuit college known as the Klementinum, famous for its globe-filled library.

I hadn’t imagined Prague to be so green, with parks wherever I looked and lavender in the medians of suburban streets. Flowerpots sat outside bedroom windows and even in the busy shopping streets around Wenceslas Square, I slipped down a narrow passageway and arrived at an exquisite garden overseen by Franciscans from a monastery nearby.

Yet amid such pastoral grace notes were signs, everywhere, of the whimsical and irreverent spirit that made Prague an epicenter of humor and art even during its long years of Soviet tyranny. It wasn’t hard to recall the city of revolutionary invention as I took in a sushi-and-shisha bar, pictures of Bob Marley outside a cannabis outlet, and fliers advertising World Cup Skateboarding competitions.

In the room-length list of historical events that fills a wall in the Museum of Communism, Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon was followed by “Freddie Mercury Founded Queen.”

In Wenceslas Square, groups of teenage girls were shouting wild greetings to a passing police car, while down by the river, young women from the Gulf States delightedly clutched their headscarves as they sped past yoga studios in polished antique roadsters. Straight-backed office ladies vaped furiously as they walked to work, and on a bench near the National Museum I was greeted by a plaque quoting Confucius, who now sounded a little like the owner of Malý Buddha: “The only limitations that exist in human lives are ours.”

I might almost have been in the Havana of the Old World, and not only because cheery rugby players were sipping Cuba Libres outside the James Dean diner.

Right under the haunting black spires of the Church of Our Lady Before Týn, a violinist delivered a plaintive rendition of an Elvis Presley love song while a man in a nearby shop, selling me a postcard, urged me to pay in kroner, not dollars, because, he said, banks are thieves. “In the Czech Republic, we have dark humor,” a friendly long-haired man explained. “Very dark humor.”

That humor speaks for a centuries-old hatred of oppression—the area has long been a target of foreign invasions—and spirit of independent-mindedness. One hot afternoon I took a tour of the city’s recent history, joined by just one other couple and led by a fiftysomething translator, Zdenek Zicpaz, who met us in Old Town Square.

“We were the first country to send tanks and arms to Ukraine,” Zicpaz explained with pride as he showed us the secret rooms near the square where before the Revolution “those who were not allowed to teach could address those who were not allowed to learn.” Now, he went on, “We have accepted the largest number of Ukrainian refugees per capita.”

He pointed to the center of the square, where one area had been labeled “Prague Maidan” and given over to a display of atrocities under the words “Russia—Hands Off Ukraine.” Before long, a tram whooshed past, painted entirely in blue and yellow, the motto stand with Ukraine painted across its sides.

Indeed, it seemed indicative of the spirit Prague embodies to the world that the very day I arrived, I would read in the papers that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was visiting, too, strolling in his T-shirt past lines of soldiers in gray uniforms. That day happened to be a national holiday in honor of Jan Hus, the religious reformer who was burned at the stake in 1415 for heresy.

Meanwhile, others around town were marking the 88th birthday of the Dalai Lama. He had visited the city roughly a dozen times after Havel became the first head of state to invite him there, which he did in a televised New Year’s message 3 days after his inauguration.

The city’s many sides

The Charles Bridge, built in 1357, spans the Vltava River. Photo by TomasSereda/Getty Images

In some ways, that very mix of boldness and devotion—of playfulness and an unwavering commitment to issues of conscience—seems to be the city’s signature. On Saturday night, the whole center of town turned into what looked like an open-air nightclub, with young women in low-cut dresses circling around raucous lads on the prowl.

But by 8:30 the next morning, I was surprised to see dozens of worn-looking boys and their glamorous sweethearts piling into a chapel in the Klementinum, crossing themselves as they entered.

Soon there wasn’t room for a single other body. It was Havel, I recalled, who had said, as if to echo Prague’s absintheries and candles (ready to be melted) in the shape of Lenin, “Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous.”

Prague is in no danger of such a sin. Its pretty houses traditionally known not by numbers but by names—The Devil, The Green Lobster, The Golden Key—give the city the air of a fairy-tale setting (overseen by a castle out of a folktale).

Where else, I thought, could I hear parts of Dvořák’s “New World Symphony” played in a church not far from the very house where the composer was born? Where else could I step inside a post office and come upon a neo-Renaissance marvel with paintings across the walls—or walk into an art gallery and find myself inside a medieval chapel, silent and half-lit so I could just make out some ancient murals?

The shops themselves in Prague are a festival of impishness and engagement. Many specialize in antiquarian quaintness—one was selling exquisite Japanese fans, others puckish marionettes. Very close to 2 Irish pubs was a store that has been selling pencils since 1790.

At one of the distinctive little places selling music boxes, I opened up a potential souvenir to be serenaded by “Jingle Bells.” Another, not unexpectedly, offered “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” The one next to it rang out with what was described as the “Anthem of Ukraine.”

A statue of writer Franz Kafka in Prague’s Jewish Quarter. Photo by Efesenko/stock.adobe.com

To sit above the pretty red roofs and spooky black spires in the Lobkowicz Palace in Prague Castle, savoring a fresh cheese sandwich, then to wander down the mazy streets that lead to the Kafka Museum (and the cool Shakespeare and Sons bookstore nearby), is an evergreen enchantment.

Yet, after I returned home, I was surprised to find myself thinking, again and again, of the classic Wunderkammer in the Strahov Monastery—a cabinet of curiosities stuffed with cannonballs, the remains of a dodo, and a 12th-century suit of armor.

As I reflected on the streets of the city I’d just walked through, and as I recalled the dog salons and tattoo studios, the T-Mobile store right above the ancient stone of a Romanesque church, I came to a startling realization: The whole city is now an engaging, modern, planetary cabinet of curiosities.

Pico Iyer is the author of numerous books, including The Art of Stillness, The Lady and the Monk, and, most recently, The Half Known Life.