Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and the glass-and-steel buildings of the 1970s.
• Walk a couple of blocks downhill through the real people of Prague
(not tourists) to
Grand Hotel Evropa,
with its hard-to-miss, dazzling
Art Nouveau exterior and plush café interior full of tourists. Stop for a
moment to consider the events of...
November of 1989
This huge square was filled every evening with more than 300,000
ecstatic Czechs and Slovaks who believed freedom was at hand.
Assembled on the balcony of the building opposite Grand Hotel
Evropa (look for the
Marks & Spencer
sign) were a priest, a rock
star (famous for his unconventional style, which constantly
unnerved the regime), Alexander Dubček (hero of the 1968 revolt),
and Václav Havel (the charismatic playwright, newly released from
prison, who was every freedom-loving Czech's Nelson Mandela).
Through a sound system provided by the rock star, Havel's voice
boomed over the gathered masses, announcing the resignation of
the Politburo and saying that the Republic of Czechoslovakia's
freedom was imminent. Picture that cold November evening,
with thousands of Czechs jingling their keychains in solidar-
ity, chanting at the government, “It's time to go now!” (To quell
this revolt, government tanks could have given it the Tiananmen
Square treatment—which had spilled patriotic blood in China just
six months earlier. Locals believe that the Soviet head of state,
Mikhail Gorbachev, must have made a phone call recommending
a nonviolent response.) For more on the events leading up to this
climactic rally, see the sidebar on the following page.
• Immediately opposite Grand Hotel Evropa is the Lucerna Gallery
(use
entry marked
Palác Rokoko
and walk straight in).
Lucerna Gallery
This grand mall retains some of its Art Deco glamour from the
1930s, with shops, theaters, a ballroom in the basement, and
the fine Lucerna Café upstairs. You'll see a sculpture—called
Wenceslas Riding an Upside-Down Horse
—hanging like a swing
from a glass dome. David Černý, who created the statue in 1999,
is one of the Czech Republic's most original contemporary art-
ists. Always aspiring to provoke controversy, Černý has painted
a menacing Russian tank pink, attached crawling babies to the
rocket-like Žižkov TV tower, defecated inside the National
Gallery to protest the policies of its director, and sunk a shark-like
Saddam Hussein inside an aquarium. Inside are also a
Ticketpro
box office
(with all available tickets, daily 9:30-18:00), a lavish
1930s Prague cinema (under the upside-down horse, shows artsy
films in Czech with English subtitles, or vice versa, 110 Kč), and
the popular
Lucerna Music Bar
in the basement (disco themes
