Prague: a brand new score for the Czech capital

You have to weave in and out of the street artists, weave around the watercolour artists, elbow your way through the crowds... Just like every day, Charles Bridge echoes to the beat of tourists. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, walk the 516 metres of Prague's most famous monument, a link spanning the Vltava River between the Old Town and the Castle district. The crowds stand shoulder to shoulder in awe of the 30 blackened statues that add to its mystery. Tormented, almost eerie, no one knows whether they appreciate or curse this invasive mess.

Postcard images of a city drowned in mist, draped in the sometimes haughty solitude of those too sure of their beauty, are little more than a distant chimera. Indeed, there are few who are not aware of its charms.

And yet, the charm of Prague is still there! But you have to dare to take the side roads to enjoy the show to the full. As magical as it is, the historic heart of the Czech capital, completely renovated and deserted by its inhabitants, really does look like a gigantic theatre set, with puppets played by tourists from all over the world.

A host of new locations

To give it a fresh new look, some receptive agencies, like the director Peter Brook revisiting The Magic Flute Mozart, cut the threads of the fictional characters to play a whole new score. "We're trying to encourage agencies to create new products to go beyond the endless treasure hunts or discovering the historic centre in an old car."confirms Lenka Zlebkova, Director of the Prague Convention Bureau. "Prague sometimes has the image of a city stuck in the past, but there are plenty of new places to do great deals"adds Bertrand Caillard, a local Frenchman and director of Meeting Europe Centrale. After managing hotels in Central Europe, he set up this company precisely to bring about a change in the programmes, mainly aimed at the French market. "It's a city that needs to be rediscovered from a new angle, by combining, for example, two days devoted to traditional Prague with a day spent in unusual places or doing unexpected activities."he continues.

And it's true that a visit to the Golden City becomes fascinating, exciting even, when you add to it a visit to a contemporary art gallery, the creations of a fashion designer, or the work of a glassmaker reinventing Bohemian crystal. Add to this accommodation in one of the trendy boutique hotels that are springing up everywhere - the Josef, Moods, Fusion, Icon, Yasmin... - and a night out in a trendy bar or club, and Prague takes on the feel of a modern capital...

Personalised souvenirs

Admittedly, in the shopping district of Stare Mesto, which stretches lazily around Old Town Square, souvenir shops have long since replaced the stalls and popular brasseries of yesteryear. But if you forget Karlova Street, which was once used by kings on their way to be crowned at St Vitus Cathedral, and whose cobblestones are now polished by hordes of tourists, you'll be able to find something to make you happy... Something simple, like a visit to a decorating shop like Manufaktura. Liberty Incentives & Congresses organises team-building events of a new kind. "On the first floor, which can be made private, around fifteen people learn how to make wooden puzzles, bath salts or soaps using local products. With the privilege of leaving the shop with a souvenir made by their own hands".says Alexandre Gausson, Sales Director at Liberty Incentives & Congresses.

Behind the secret porches

To (re)discover it, the ritual is immutable. Every hour, the crowd gathers in the Old Town square, beneath the astronomical clock and its twelve statues of apostles who tirelessly carry out their duties. Then it's off again, wandering through the surrounding streets and alleys with their architectural wealth spanning several centuries. We wander from Gothic houses to Baroque facades, in a debauchery of pastel, yellow, pink or pistachio walls. All the way to the town hall, a sublime example of Art Nouveau with its sublime iron and glass marquee.

From Old Town Square, you can also get to the Jewish Quarter, with its magnificent Renaissance synagogue and its impressive cemetery with its 12,000 tangled headstones. To do this, you need to take Rue Parizska, the local Champs-Élysées, where Vuitton and Gucci can be found, as in Paris or Milan. For the local trend, you might prefer nearby rue Dlouha, where the talent of young Czech designers explodes in a bouquet of a dozen sleek showrooms. To make sure you don't miss any of them, the Czech Fashion Centre publishes a map listing the boutiques of designers such as Jozef Sloboda, Hana Havelkova and Beata Rajska, the most famous of them all.

New trendy addresses

Prague has no shortage of alternative addresses to fan the flames! It's just a question of finding them. "I do a lot of blind travel to offer new experiences every month.continues Bertrand Caillard. The main theme is the 'wow' effect. Of course, it all depends on the profile and age of the group, but I'm a great believer in the Eco-technical Museum, a former water treatment plant which, with its underground tunnels, machine room and vast spaces, perfectly meets this need for originality".

These new venues abound in Nove Mesto, the 'new city' that stretches around Wenceslas Square. Although misleadingly named, this avenue, 750 metres long, lined with art deco buildings and closed off by the National Museum, is well worth a visit. If only for the sake of remembrance. It was the scene of every major event in the country, from the Prague Spring of 1968 to Vaclav Havel's speech in 1989. And then there's 'real life'. Businessmen in a hurry rushing around on packed trams; young Praguers lingering in cafés and cinemas. As elsewhere in Europe, international brand shops and shopping centres have also reshaped the urban landscape here. Particularly on Rytirska, a street packed with big-name stores and trendy cafés such as Café Café and Ku Bar, to name but the most famous. The new managers who bless the market economy and the young hipsters rub shoulders here in a still smoky atmosphere.

The latest of these new consumer palaces is the Palladium, a gigantic shopping centre on the Place de la République, whose modern architecture stands out in a city that prides itself on its plastic unity. You only have to climb to the top of one of the towers or bell towers to see that nothing, or almost nothing, is out of place. Apart from the Dancing house designed by Franck Gehry. Laid out along the Quai Masaryk, its deconstructivist architecture contrasts with the surrounding baroque and, in its undulating forms, recalls the silhouette of a famous dance couple, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

The Vinohrady district is just a few minutes away. With its dapper Vinohradska and Manesova avenues lined with Baroque and Art Deco buildings, its manicured parks and its National House, a neo-Renaissance building with gilding and paintings on every floor that rents out its rooms for a variety of events, it has a gentle air about it. Almost too much, in fact. The atmosphere changes at the end of the day: the bobos, who have long since abandoned their old Skoda cars for flashy Audis, linger in the chic cafés and trendy restaurants, all perfect venues for chic, cosy evenings out. There's a huge choice, from the ethnochic Sahara Café to the British-style Bar & Books, where you can enjoy a Moravian wine or smoke a cigar, or the Aromi, which serves Italian cuisine in a brick-and-wood atmosphere. All are available for private hire, especially for groups of 30 to 40 people...

Excessively romantic

The other bank of the Vltava may be much quieter, but it is nonetheless an open-air theatre that would make even the most insensitive heart skip a beat, and a favourite haunt of photographers and poets. Mala Strana, in particular, is romantic to the extreme, with its maze of narrow streets and secret squares lined with public benches, its water mills and flights of stairs, its magnificent churches and Baroque buildings lined up as if on parade. Lined with old bourgeois houses - now cafés - and flamboyant palaces that now house the Italian and Romanian embassies, Rue Nerudova, the Royal Way, leads to the castle, the essential stop-off point for any incentive organised in Prague.

From addition to reconstruction, it has grown steadily for 800 years. So much so, that according to the Guinness Book of World Records, it is the largest castle in the world. And it's true that you'd almost need a GPS to explore its tangle of buildings with rigorous facades, stroll through its Italianate gardens and marvel at its Cathedral of St Vitus and Convent of St George. And in the gigantic Vladislav Hall, with its unmistakably Gothic accents, used for sumptuous gala evenings, you'll find yourself dreaming of the knightly jousts that took place here 400 years ago... Further on, the Ruelle d'Or, whose sixteen colourful little houses were renovated last year, shines like a new penny. What could be more natural, after all? Legend has it that it was here that alchemists transformed lead into gold! It was also here - at no. 22 - that Kafka, who said that "Prague never lets go of those who discover it"wrote A country doctor. His house is besieged by visitors.

Embassy Incentive

For some years now, you can also indulge in some very French chauvinism, as the baroque Buquoy Palace, aka the French Embassy, has been renting out its walls for very upmarket events. These take place in a succession of neo-baroque rooms and salons with evocative names - Richelieu or Charles X - and are suitable for all events for up to 250 people: conferences, cocktail parties, dinners or concerts. "The music room, where Mozart and Ravel have played, is particularly special."explains Patrick Garçon, the embassy's steward. For the record, François Mitterrand had breakfast there with Vaclav Havel, then a dissident, one morning in 1988.

Just a stone's throw from the castle, perched on the tranquil hill of Petrin, the Strahov monastery, one of the largest in Bohemia, combines spiritual elevation with more artificial paradises. The monastery's cloister is Baroque, its library Medieval. Its reading rooms, with their richly decorated ceilings, are lined with 130,000 books and illuminated manuscripts. The abbey itself houses a brasserie, where the pungent smell of hops gets right to your throat as soon as you walk through the doors. The beer is still brewed here, topped with a firm head of foam and named Saint-Norbert, after the founder of the Prémontrés order. And since Czech doctors claim that beer is good for you, there's no reason to go without. In fact, the tour operators offer a number of stops along the way, so that you can fully appreciate the virtues of this national drink!

Another attraction that is a big hit with incentive groups is the extravagant Skydive Arena wind tunnel on the outskirts of Prague. Dressed in a protruding suit, like a parachutist, you learn to 'float' in the air in a Plexiglas tube four metres in diameter, carried by winds of 160 to 280 km/h! It's not dangerous, but the experience is hilarious. It's sure to bring a group together, and perhaps serve as a reminder that, beyond the old stones, Prague knows how to be in the wind...