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corpses of Czechoslovak Communist leaders as propaganda. Now it is a history museum abutting a park with one of the city’s best vantage points, offering views of the Zizkov neighborhood just below as well as the ninth-century fairy-tale Prague Castle complex with its ancient cathedral atop a hill in the distance. Likewise, because of its location, this modernist memorial, identifiable by the 30-foot-tall equestrian bronze statue of 15th-century dissident Hussite warrior Jan Zizka in front, is also visible from all parts of Prague. The memorial museum’s grandiose columns and fine marble staircase are intimidating and its exhibits unsettling, but it is all worth a visit.

A statue-lined late-14th-century pedestrian-only bridge is another gallery of sorts, linking the castle to the Old Town, and one walk across it is never enough, as innumerable tourists who stroll back and forth at all hours across the Vltava will attest. I also headed across it to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in the Malá Strana area. The remarkable hotel is housed in a 14th-century monastery that has been restored, and its odd-shaped historic rooms, some with views of the castle, combined with the hotel’s stellar restaurant and seamless service, bring Prague into a new era of five-star quality and design.

For more 21st-century hospitality and style, head back across the river and check into the Hotel Josef near the Old Town Square; the boutique design venue has chic top-floor rooms with views of medieval streets and sinister-looking Tyn Church’s twin Gothic-spired towers. Walk from there into the square to find the ever-popular 600-year-old astronomical clock, whose mechanized figures enact a pantomime every hour, along with innumerable bars and cafes, especially the one upstairs at the so-called House of the Black Madonna, a former department store designed in 1912 by Josef Gocar. In the Staré Město area, it is Prague’s first cubist building but obligingly incorporates into its facade a baroque Madonna figure that belonged to an older structure on the site. The building now contains the Cubist Museum on the third and fourth floors, but the fully restored cash-only Grand Cafe Orient on its second floor is the place to be. It offers attentive old-fashioned service and great coffee and pancakes amid Gocar’s interior, which is better than any museum exhibit.

For an insider’s view of Prague, I joined two walking tours. The first, Alternative Prague Tours, gave an offbeat view of graffiti art, underground hangouts, a cafe where bitcoin is the only currency, and Communist-era shopping (when you got Western jeans, our guide informed us, you had to wear them in secret, indoors only). But it was Taste of Prague, a walking food tour, that shone a light on what it is like to eat in and be in modern-day Prague.

Our energetic host, Jan, zipped us through some of the best cooked meats, served at a butchery; through 20th-century Lucerna Palace, a performance hall off Vodickova Street where a tongue-in-cheek sculpture of St. Wenceslas riding an upside-down dead horse by David Cerny is suspended and where Jan went for his prom dance; into Lokal, a gastropub serving basic Czech fare and pilsners; and past another enigmatic David Cerny sculpture, a bust of Kafka. We also dipped into Jan favorites such as the cafe Místo and visited the burgeoning Karlín neighborhood, where some of the city’s hippest restaurants are. Eska, recommended by glass company Artel CEO Karen Feldman, an expat American and author of a definitive Prague guidebook, was a streetcar ride away from the center of town; here modern Czech food and a spare Scandinavian sensibility were fused to perfection. Both design and food junkies will find much to love.

Yes Prague, I will be back. n mandarinoriental.com/prague/mala-strana/ luxury-hotel, hoteljosef.com, parkhotel-praha.cz

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