Prague has a trick up its sleeve.
First, it shows you everything you expect.
Spires.
Cobblestones.
Saints.
The Astronomical Clock.
Beer.
And just when the tourist is convinced they’ve understood the city, Prague starts doing something strange.
A man appears to be hanging in mid-air above the street.
A horse is suspended upside down.
Kafka falls apart into pieces.
Two men are urinating onto the Czech Republic.
Then, the second part of the tour begins.
Stop one: The Head of Kafka
A crowd gathers at Quadrio.
Phones are all pointed in the same direction.
At first glance, you see a massive metallic face.
Franz Kafka.
Then, the face begins to disintegrate.
Layers rotate in different directions.
The nose no longer aligns with the mouth.
The forehead drifts away from the rest of the head.
For a moment, the person vanishes.
Only the mechanism remains.
Then, everything slowly returns to its place.
Kafka looks at Prague again.
Until the next collapse.
If you’re looking for a single image that could summarize this city, it’s hard to find a better one.
Stop two: Freud hangs above the street
We continue walking.
Prague behaves normally again.
Tenement houses.
Tourists.
Restaurants.
Someone drags a suitcase over the cobblestones.
Someone checks an address on their phone.
And then, you have to look up.
A man is hanging above the street.
It is Sigmund Freud.
He is holding on with one hand.
It’s unclear if he is falling.
Or if he has decided to stay.
Or perhaps all of humanity looks exactly like this, we just don’t see it from the sidewalk.
At this sculpture, the first important rule of visiting Prague’s Černý installations appears:
don’t just look straight ahead.
Stop three: Lucerna and the horse that won’t ride
We enter the Lucerna Passage.
This is one of those Prague passages that can transport you to another era.
But before we marvel at the architecture, we look up again.
Saint Wenceslas.
A horse.
Except the horse is dead.
And it is hanging upside down.
Černý takes one of the most important Czech symbols and does to it something that is both the most un-Czech and most Czech thing imaginable.
First, he strips it of its solemnity.
Then, he makes us wonder where that solemnity came from in the first place.
A few hundred meters away stands the official Wenceslas.
Proud.
Upright.
Monumental.
Here, we get its crooked reflection.
This is one of the reasons why the Lucerna Palace in Prague is something more than just another historic passage.
Stop four: Two men and a map of the Czech Republic
We cross over to the Lesser Town (Malá Strana).
Here, Prague tries to reclaim its reputation as a romantic city.
Palaces.
Narrow streets.
A bridge.
Gardens.
And then, in the courtyard of the Franz Kafka Museum, we see them.
Two naked men.
Urinating.
Onto the Czech Republic.
You could try writing long political analyses.
You could talk about the state, national symbolism, power, and Czech irony.
But for the first few seconds, the reaction of most people is much simpler.
Laughter.
And that is important.
Because Černý doesn’t start with a lecture.
He starts with a reaction.
Only later can we think.
Stop five: Žižkov and the faceless children
To understand Černý, it’s worth leaving the center eventually.
We head to Žižkov.
The district itself is a good antidote to overly sweetened Prague.
Life here looks more ordinary.
Less touristy.
And looming over everything is the television tower.
You can dislike it.
You can love it.
You can think it looks like a rocket that mistakenly failed to launch.
Černý added something else to it.
Children.
Giant Miminka climb the structure.
They don’t have normal faces.
From afar, they are funny.
Up close, a little less so.
And again, we return to that characteristic state triggered by Černý’s best works:
a person doesn’t know whether to laugh or feel uneasy.
Stop six: Lilith and the new Prague
Then, Karlín.
Here, the old city is left far behind.
Modern architecture, offices, new investments.
And a massive Lilith.
Černý doesn’t stick her to the city like a decoration.
The figure enters the architecture.
Embraces it.
Dominates it.
Becomes part of the building.
This is an important moment in the walk.
Because it shows that David Černý doesn’t belong exclusively to the Prague of the nineties.
His art continues to participate in the conversation about what a contemporary city should look like.
Alternative Prague – what did we actually see?
Not a single Gothic cathedral.
Not a single royal tomb.
Not a single Baroque monstrance.
And yet, after a few hours, we’ve learned quite a bit about the Czech Republic.
Their attitude toward heroes.
Toward politics.
Toward history.
Toward their own national symbols.
Toward the West.
Toward communism.
Toward modernity.
Toward solemnity.
Especially toward solemnity.
And this is where the most interesting part of this route begins.
Because unconventional Prague isn’t a collection of “hidden gems” that someone filmed for TikTok.
That’s not the point.
An unconventional city begins when we stop asking only:
what is worth seeing in Prague?
And start asking:
why is this standing here?
David Černý – a city map for people who have already seen the Old Town Square
If you are in Prague for the first time, see the Old Town Square.
Go to Charles Bridge.
Climb to Prague Castle.
No need to pretend that classic places are uninteresting just because they are popular.
But then, turn off the main path.
Enter a passage.
Look up.
Hop on a tram.
Ride to Žižkov.
See Karlín.
Prague begins to be truly fascinating just when it stops looking like the photo you saw before arriving.
If you want to start with the city’s classic history, see Prague in a Nutshell.
If you prefer less obvious places and twentieth-century architecture, choose Brutalism – Letná.
For the evening, Prague in the Shadow of Legends – Ghosts of the Old Town fits well.
And all current routes can be found on – Prague tours with a Polish guide.
The strangest thing is that after a while, everything seems normal
At first, Freud hanging above the street is an absurdity.
The horse in Lucerna is a provocation.
The children on the tower are something strange.
The urinating men are a scandal.
And then, a person spends a few hours with them.
And they stop surprising you.
They begin to belong to the city.
Perhaps that is the greatest success of David Černý.
He didn’t create a gallery in Prague.
He made the city accept his jokes, provocations, and quirks as part of its own organism.
The saints still stand on their pedestals.
Kafka still looks out from books.
The spires are still Gothic.
Only from time to time do you need to look higher.
Because maybe Freud is hanging there.