14 January 2025

Charles IV Bridge over the Vltava River in Prague (Czech Republic)

Prague, this dramatic and suffering centre of Western destiny,
is gradually fading away into the mists of Eastern Europe,
to which it has never really belonged.
This city – the first university town east of the Rhine,
the scene in the fifteenth century of the first great European revolution,
the cradle of the Reformation, the city where the Thirty Years War broke out,
the capital of the Baroque and its excesses –
this city tried in vain in 1968 to westernize a socialism ‘that came in from the cold’.

Prague by Milan Kundera