Prague: A Medieval Orgasm

Staré Město Náměstí, Prague's Old Town, 11:50 pm on 22 June 2008... Amid the dazzling yellow-and-red hordes of celebrating Spaniards, still mulling over the penalties and our beloved Italy's elimination from Euro 2008, I manage, despite everything, despite the azure flocks beginning to retreat towards the Pilsner pubs, to feel a double sensation, comfort and joy, ecstasy and happiness, for two reasons: first, I'm not in the city that has hosted me for 7 years, Barcelona, where the teasing would be followed by mockery, public accusation and stinging raspberries; and second, because before me, behind me, around me, a fantastic city flourishes and lives, wonderfully medieval, ancient soul, modern heart. Prague: I didn't expect it to be like this.

Having visited the other monumental cities of the East, for me who loves the Middle Ages, its culture, its forced obscurantism, its legend and its riches, Prague was something of the acid test.

If they asked me: what can't you miss in Prague?... well, I'd say you can't miss a thing, in fact everything you'll see will be aesthetically beautiful, at times perhaps superficial but undoubtedly a source of great wonder. In the heart of Europe, Mitteleuropa Prague has been over the centuries not only a city where art, music, cinema, dance and theatre were an integral part of the somewhat naive life of Praguers, but also the seat and setting of first-rate historical events. From a small village in the Late Middle Ages, it gradually became an important urban centre, then the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, until it climbed the mountain of Glory and briefly became the capital of the Holy Roman Empire.

Unfortunately, the barbarities of the Thirty Years' War, which broke out right here with the "deliberate" fall of some Catholic councillors from the windows of the Castle (the famous Defenestration of Prague), which was the fuse of a bloody and cruel conflict that forever crushed the nationalistic and Lutheran claims of the Bohemians... Then decline until 1800, when art exploded with its marvellous fortunes, until the Nazi annexation, the strangled cry for freedom, the Soviet looting, other cries strangled in '68... stories of oppressed freedom, stories of a country now proud of how and what it is. A people that has to be: a UNESCO heritage site, all things considered, it can't be left without having seen: The Castle early in the morning, Charles Bridge (hold tight to your bags, purses, money belts, backpacks... please), the Old Town, the Jewish Quarter and Malá Strana.

Eat Czech food, which is delicious, a dream of a place: Kolkovna, in the Jewish quarter, fantastic, delicious and very cheap (better to book...). As for the rest, they'll be emotions that you'll carry with you non-stop, guys... Prague catapults my soul back a thousand years, to the time of the four Pragues: Staré Město, Hradčany, Nové Město and Vyšehrad.

Four ancient souls that later became today's Prague, united under the sign of incomparable beauty, unequalled elegance, breathtaking panoramic views, from beer to goulash, from its smoky pubs to its cobbled alleys, but also its towers, its parks, the Vltava, its Charles Bridge, its Gothic, Romanesque and Renaissance churches, a bit of Art Nouveau, a bit of Cubism and again Kafka, the enveloping music, the knights and their massacres, the Black Theatre, the deformed marionettes, gargoyles grinning from the edges of churches, its Castle, its bastions, its squares....ahhhhh enough.. Enough... No description can ever be enough... Prague must be seen; as the Czechs call it, the mother of all cities opens up to the future as the cultural metropolis of the New Great Europe. byeeeeee Andrea