Fred A. Bernstein

Published in Metropolitan Home, July 1990

McDonald's may have conquered Moscow, but 1,000 miles away in Prague, there are no golden arches (yet). Just gold-domed cathedrals, stirring Baroque palaces and ancient, cobblestoned bridges across the Vltava River. "The reason you love Prague," explains architecture writer Jiri ("Izzy") Horsky, a lifelong resident who took me on a walking tour of Czechoslovakia's Golden City, "is that you were raised on fairy tales-castles with turrets, palaces with stained-glass windows. And," Horsky observes, "fairy tales look like Prague."

It's true. Prague amazes first-time visitors (as I learned this spring) with untold riches from its past brushes with greatness: Gothic wonders built by Charles IV, the Bohemian king who became Holy Roman Emperor (and made Prague his capital) in 1349; Baroque masterpieces constructed by the Hapsburg rulers in the 1600s; whole neighborhoods of stunning art deco and art nouveau buildings erected between 1900 and 1930, during the city's last gasp as a cultural and economic center. That they were preserved is due to luck, both good (Prague suffered little damage during World War II) and bad: In the 1950s and 1960s, while Western Europe flourished, and in many cases replaced its finest architecture with banal new buildings, Prague languished in Communism's economic doldrums. The result: In many neighborhoods you get the sense that not even a light bulb has been changed in 50 years.

But for how long?

Driving my rental car from Vienna to Prague, I was plagued by images of rapid change: elegant old buildings "enlivened" by neon lights, McDonald's sprouting up on every corner. Capitalism, I thought, hasn't always been kind to cities -- and capitalism is what Prague is all about now. Will the perfectly preserved crown jewel of Eastern Europe (and the city that stood in for 18th century Vienna in Milos Forman's Amadeus) resist overcommercialization-or will it join the list of places I'm glad I visited once, but don't want to go back to.

And then, as my red Opel took me across the moody Vltava River and down Prague's narrow streets to U Tri Pstrosu (The Three Ostriches), a wondrous inn in a 16th century building, I breathed a sigh of relief. If you're lucky enough to arrive on a foggy night, throw open the window of your tiny ($35 a night) room and gaze down at the 600-year-old Charles Bridge (like much of Prague, mercifully closed to traffic), you can pretend you're not just in another city but another century. And if, by morning's light, most of the buildings seem a bit down at the heels, at least they're standing.

Everywhere, Prague is both staying the same and changing. There is a feeling of excitement in the streets. "It's still like Sunday every day," one resident observes. Visitors sense the importance of this moment. Says a San Francisco woman checking out the stunning Baroque opera house, "I'm glad I came this year."

Tourism, not surprisingly, is booming. Ask any American college student about the must-sees for the summer of 1990, and don't be surprised if Prague is mentioned before Florence. "By 1991, I expect it to look like Paris or London, in terms of tour buses," says Elizabeth Shepard, an Eastern European program director at Berkeley. With only a dozen or so Western-style hotels, accommodations are in ludicrously short supply. "People keep asking me if I can put them up with grandmothers or uncles," says Peter Demetz, a Czech-born Yale professor who recently went back to Prague. "But I only have so many uncles." Restaurants are also overtaxed. Says Demetz, "At some places, you have to use code words to get a reservation."

Development -- lots of it -- is about to move beyond the rumor stage. Horsky, a lifelong preservationist, bristles with word of exciting but terrifying projects. Sheraton and Hilton are said to be considering Prague sites, while a French consortium, after breaking ground for a 200-room hotel, decided to up it to 1,500. George Hartman, a Czech-born architect who practices in Seattle, returned to Prague with plans to build a floating hotel on the Vltava. But when he put in his application, he was told there were already 20 other "boatel" plans on file.

"The McDonald's syndrome is inevitable -- it's a question of how much and in what context," says John Eisler, a prominent Czech architect who now works for Richard Meier in New York. The lure of the dollar may prove irresistible. What's more, without some foreign investment, buildings may be saved from the wrecker's ball, only to crumble from neglect. But preservationists, after operating secretly during the Communist regime, are standing guard. Examining a photograph of a medieval neighborhood, Horsky points to the roof of an endangered church: "If we have to, to stop its destruction, we're willing to get arrested."

He probably won't have to. Czechs hoping to save their city have a secret ally: the numbingly slow bureaucracy that has both infuriated and inspired Prague's authors, from Franz Kafka (whose house, fittingly, still stands in the Jewish quarter) to Vaclav Havel. Hartman, frustrated on his boatel project, says, "You need 36 separate approvals to do anything. And everyone you speak to says, 'That's impossible,' almost as a reflex. After 50 years of being told what to do, they have a hard time thinking for themselves." Perhaps it is not incompetence but a secret wisdom -- the wisdom to take things step-by-step, to not throw away in months what took hundreds of years to build. "Czechs know the value of what they have," confirms Eisler. "With careful planning, Prague has a chance to become a positive model for how cities can treat their cultural heritage." And so there probably won't be Big Macs or Kentucky Fried Chickens in Prague for years. And if I go back, I may have to sleep on someone's uncle's sofa.

Know what? I'll be glad to.