PRAGUE

A YEAR SINCE IT WAS DELIGHTES BY STORM FLOODS, THE CZECH CITY HAS RESURACED AS ONE OF EUROPE’S GREAT CAPITALS; WITH A HANDFUL OF SLEEK HOTELS GIVING AN EDGE TO THE ORNATE OLD TOWN.

The Czechs have a talent for enterprise and reinvention. Just 10 years since the creation of the Czech Republic, its capital is the seventh most-visited city in Europe; its national car manufacturer Skoda has been transformed from a standing joke into the fastest-growing automotive brand in Europe; its hotels and restaurants have improved beyond measure; even the glass and brewing industries are thriving. And now the country is poised to enter the European Union. For all the horrors it has suffered historically, Prague is a city with a will to and much to live for.

Last summer, however, it suffered its worst floods in a century. Around 50.000 people were evacuated from their homes and almost 10 per cent of the city was deluged. But true to the spirit of the place, Prague was up and running within weeks. (The 650-year-old Charles Bridge reopened less than a fortnight after the high-water mark, as did most of sights.) By mid-November, the city was back in business, bracing itself for the NATO conference and an influx of almost 7,000 delegates, including 46 heads of state.

But things are rarely as rosy as they look. “They have made it ok for tourists”, my driver told me darkly on the way into town from the airport. “But for the people who live here, it’s not so good.” Many of the problems, it transpires, lie out of sight below the ground, especially in the outstandingly beautiful, largely 18th-century Staré Mesto, or Old Town – a low-lying area east of the River Vltava. Most of the buildings here have capacious cellars, the result of decision to raise the city to protect it from floods. What had been street-level floors should have been filled in but in many cases became basements. Inevitably, these were inundated. When I was there, almost every street approaching the river, especially on the low-lying west bank around Kampa Island, bore evidence of damp rising two or sometimes three meters above the pavement.

In addition, 17 of Prague’s 53 metro stations were closed and didn’t reopen again until the spring. And not everything in the guidebooks was functioning, such as the new Kampa Museum with its peerless collection of Kupkas (its permanent collection, amassed by the economist and governor of International Monetary Fund Jan Mládek, had only been on show a couple of months). The museum was planning a temporary exhibition over the summer, but the reopening of the permanent collection is not likely until the autumn.

There is, however, no shortage of great art on view in Prague, none greater than the state collection of 19th- and 20th-century work at the Veletržní Palác, or Trade Fair
Palace, a formidable functionalist masterpiece built in 1928. Admired by the notoriously hard-to-please Le Corbusier (one of whose rare but frankly derivative paintings hangs here), but Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, Monet, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Renoir, Seurat, Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse, Rodin, Chagall, Klimt, Schiele, Munch and Miró are also represented. Don’t miss Toulouse-Lautrec’s Moulin Rouge, in which two women – apparently the dancer Jane Avril and clown Cha-U-Kao – dance in an embrace, while Oscar Wilde (purportedly) looks on superciliously from the top right-hand corner. Another must-see is Henri ‚le douanier‘ Rousseau’s touching self portrait – he is dressed as an artist, holding a palette, but there’s a Britis merchant ship moored in the background to remind us of his day job as a customs official.

There are also galleries devoted to industrial design, furniture, architecture and theathre. I was particularly taken with the theatrical model boxes made by the influential stage designer Josef Svoboda, who died last year, not least because that evening we had opera tickets for a production he’d designed in 1969.

Prague takes its musical heritage very seriously: there are numerous concerts, and its world-class national opera company performs in three of the city’s theatres. Perhaps inevitably in such a young country, there is an emphasis on the Czech repetoire – Dvorák, Janácek, Smetana, Martinu and Mozart (who may have beein born Austrian, but spent part of his life in Prague and is treated by the Czechs as one of their own).

There is something profoundly resonant about experiencing a piece of music in the theatre for which it was commissioned – in this case, Mozart’s Don Giovanni in the exquisitely compact, 18th-century Estates Theatre. It was premiered in 1787, two years before the French Revolution, and one wonders what the aristrocratic audience must have made of the great ‚Viva La Liberta‘ chorus. The theatre itself is a riot of rococo gilt against a power-blue ground; the acoustic is warm; and the standard of performance is exemplary. Only the sightlines are a problem. I’d bought the last pair of tickets, up in the gallery (admitted I’d paid a derisory Kc 200 or about L 4,50), but although the sound was perfect, the view was impeded. If there is a choice, opt for the stalls, or seats in the of the narrow horseshoe auditorium.

Having acquired a taste for Prague baroque, I headed next morning to the Sternberg Palace, one of the many stately buildings on picturebook Hradcanské Námestí up by the castle. This is the area above all others that has turned Prague into a film set, one of most popular locations in the world thanks to its skilled technicians, low costs and resemblance (with a little artistic contrivance) to period Paris, Russia and London. (Even such unlikely modern blockbusters as The Boure Identity and XXX were partially shot in and around the city.) The Sternberg now contains the state’s collection of old masters. But thanks to the last president Václav Havel’s enlightened policy of restoring plundered art to its original owners (the cynical view may be that this saves on insurance), it is now a fairly indiscriminate collection of indifferent works – mostly tortured saints and Dutch and Flemish landscapes. Within the castle itself, the Prague Castle Picture Gallery, for all its Titians, Tintorettos and Rubens, is even less inspiring. For masterpieces of real greatness, you need to head out of town.

Thirty kilometers north of Prague, the richly sgraffitoed Renaissane castle of Nelahozeves contains not just arguably the greatest painting in the Czech Republic, Bruegel’s Haymaking, but two breathtaking, uncharacteristically large Canalettos of London, a miraculous Cranach Madonna and a superb Velásquez. It also houses one of the largest collections of Spanish portraits outside the Prado. The Bruegel is one of the same seasonal series of 1565 as the endlessly reproduced Hunters in the Snow (which hangs with two others in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; another in the New York’s Metropolitan; and the sixth, the subject of Michael Frayn’s brilliant novel Headlong, is lost).

Inexplicably overlooked by almost every guidebook, Nelahozeves is the home of William Lobkowicz, a former real estate agent from Boston and the descendant of a family of Czech princes, whose family renounced their titles when the first republic was created in 1918, and fled west in 1948. Watching television during the Velvet Revolution he was moved and intrigued by scenes of East German refugees petitioning the West German embassy in Prague, another Lobkowicz palace. He took a crash course in Czech and in 1991, aged 29, moved back to Prague, just as the first law providing for the return of buildings, businesses and artworks was passed. He then set about attempting to piece together the family’s heritage: over a period of seven years and with the assistance of four lawyers, Lobkowicz tracked down 20,000-odd pieces across 100 locations that were rightfully his. ‘It’s a stamp-happy part of the world,’ he told me, ‘and for once Czech orderliness and bureaucracy paid dividends because it left records and lists, and allowed us to trace these things.’

The result is one of the most fascinating private museums in the world: a collection amassed by one family not just of old masters, but of decorative arts, intriguing letters (some dating back to the 16th century), 65,000 books, musical instruments and manuscripts by, among others, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. (One Lobkowicz ancestor almost bankrupted the family after commissioning works from Beethoven and is the dedicatee of three symphonies including the ‘Third’ – ‘Eroica’ – and the ‘Fifth’.)

To pay for its upkeep, Lobkowicz hires out the castle for events, concerts and parties. He has also revived the family brewery and winery, glass and toys and started a restaurant – for which he hired the chef from the Four Seasons hotel in Prague. (We hadn’t timed our visit to coincide with lunch, but if the apple and walnut strudel with almond ice cream is an indicator, it’s worth making time for.) Just one more example, it seems, of the Czech enterprise.


WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK

Back in the 19th century, Bohemian cooks were among the most prized in Europe. But 40 years of Soviet domination dealt the region’s culinary reputation a blow by imposing three Ministry of Trade-issue cookery books on the nation’s chefs and making it illegal for restaurants to deviate from the instructions therein. Though the intention was to stop restaurants substituting inferior ingredients and skimping on quantity, the effect was all but to obliterate several centuries of melting-pot cuisine, bearing influences from across the Habsburg Empire and reflecting the city’s location at the very of Europe. As Claudia Roden puts it in The Book of Jewish Food, Prague offered “a rich and refined cosmopolitan cuisine evolved through Viennese, French, Ottoman and Magyar influences”. Happily the past decade has seen the openings of hundreds of restaurants that draw once more on cosmopolitan influences, although you can still get an authentic Cold War-era meal of fatty pork, cabbage, dumplings, surly service and gravy-stained tablecloths.

Square, Malostranské Námesti 5, Prague 1 (00420 222 716 003). This is one of the city‘s newest, chicest restaurants. The space may be vaulted, but the décor is resolutely minimalist and modern. There’s a strong Italian influence to the menu, but we stuck to more local dishes: lean and tender venison with a juniper and red-wine sauce, wild mushrooms and pumpkin soufflé, and rabbit stuffed with chestnuts, chanterelles and shallots. There were excellent soups to start with, and dark, seeded bread as well as ciabatta plus peppery olive oil to dip it. A meal costs about L15 a head, including wine and mineral water.

Pravda, Paríšká 17 (00420 222 326 203). A restaurant that wears its name as ironically as its crop-haired waiters sport their slick, black, faux-military uniforms. The menu veers around the Mediterranean and South-East Asia, although oddly the best of the four dishes we sampled was the only Czech one listed: kulajda, a perfectly judged creamy dill-and-potato soup with poached egg. The blanched, vaulted interior is stylish, but the cooing is unexceptional and – perhaps justifying its location on the city’s answer to Bond Street – expensive by Prague standards. Three-course meals from L26 per person without wine.

U Modré Kachnicky II, Michalská 16 (00420 224 213 418). Aiming to raise Czech cooking to new heights of refinement, this restaurant has an emphasis on game: boar with rosehips, drake breast with honey, hare in cream, venison with wine. But the menu changes often, and conventional dishes such as pork with sauerkraut feature, too. There’s not much for vegetarians, but there is an interesting list of Moravian wines. It has a sister restaurant in Malá Strana (Nevodidská 6; 00420 257 320 308). Three-course meals from L18 per person without wine.

Kolkovna, V Kolkovne 8 (00420 224 819 701). Just the place for a bargain lunch, a post-opera supper or a drink in slightly Art Nouveau-influenced pub surroundings. Hearty borscht or goulash soup served in a hollowed-out loaf of bread (a better idean than it sounds), and simple meat dishes such as steak with pommes boulangere and roasted peppers or duck breast with sautéed potatoes. It’s owned by the Urquell brewery – hence the great cooper vat lit by the entrance – so the beer is excellent, especially the dark one. And it’s full of Czechs, not tourists. Three-course meals from L6,80 per person without wine.

Nostress, Dušní 10. A café-gallery opposite Kolkovna that serves sensational hot chocolate as well Indonesian-influenced food.

Bakeshop Praha, V Kolkovne 2. One of the best bakeries in the city. There are a few café tables out the front, or you can buy bread, bagels and patisserie to take away.

Kavárna Obecní Dum, Námestí Republiky 5. The apogee of glittering Czech Art Nouveau architecture, the Obecní Dum has two restaurants, a fabulous decor, ludicrously pretentious, overpriced menus (one at L43 a head), a formal café (although the cake trolley isn‘t promising), an the alluring Americky Bar in the basement.


WHERE TO STAY

Prague has no shortage of top-end accommodation: 12 five-star hotels, in fact, of which the new Four Seasons is arguably the most attractive. Right by Charles Bridge, on the right bank of the Vltava, it suffered seriously in the floods but has recently reopened. However, the past year ahs also seen the opening of a number of new boutique hotels. Hotel Josef is conveniently located in Josefov (the former ghetto and setting of Bruce Chatwin’s novel Utz), within walking distance of almost every main sight in the city. It was designed by the Prague-born, London-based architect Eva Jiricna who is famous for her staircases and use of transparent glass. The entrance is flanked by two curved glass protuberances illuminated at night so as to be all invisible. Arriving at dusk, I walked straight into one, splitting the skin above my eye. Still, checking in to a hotel bleeding heavily from the brow is one test of the service, and the front-desk staff could not have been kinder, calmer or more attentive. I was ushered into the privacy of an office; antiseptic, cotton wool and gauze were proffered and someone was dispatched to buy plasters. The duty manager confided that he done the same thing himself, as had other guests. Which suggests to me it’s a design fault.

True to Jiricna’s fondness for glazing, there was a lot of it in our room (number 504): the bathroom walls, basin, shelves, adjoining wardrobe, desk and side-table were all transparent glass, which under the circumstances I found almost as disquieting as the orange-and-khaki colour scheme, but there’s no accounting for taste. And even that was not so disturbing as the fire drill and instructions to evacuate the hotel that boomed through the Tannoy some time in the early hours of Saturday morning. As the guests – some in their pyjamas, some with clothes hastily pulled over their night things – assembled bleary-eyed in reception, none of the staff seemed to know what was going on or where we should be. But after 20 minutes or so, we were allowed back to bed. And the best, at least, was blissfully comfortable.
In spite of all this, however I did broadly enjoy staying here and would do so again. But next time, I’ll request a room with a bath, not just a shower, and more muted décor.