Discover Prague From a Terrace

No guide-book ever can initiate you into the atmosphere of a city like Prague. I look upon cities, landscapes, in fact upon life in general, from a terrace—not over or through the leaves of a guide-book.

There is a deal more interest in a terrace, and you can always find one if you really want to do so, than the casual passer-by is inclined to realize. It is not suggested that the traveller on arriving in a strange city should make a bee-line for the nearest terrace. There are terraces and terraces, each one with its own definable point of view, and it is this quality which should influence the traveller's choice.

Prague offers considerable variety in terraces suitable to every conceivable outlook on life. You may choose a terrace that looks out over the factory quarter of Prague, over grimy Smichov for instance, and make notes on the growing industrial prosperity of the city. You will probably be smoked out of your position, for a cheap and nasty variety of brown coal is used by local industries. If you belong to the eclectic you may be privileged to look down on Prague from a terrace with a background of diplomacy, and find the outlook somewhat limited.

Again, there are terraces where you can get beer and other refreshment. Such terraces are generally so contrived as to give you an outlook too varied to allow of concentration on the essentials of the city; the background to these terraces is generally some little building where the waiter lurks for orders.

But there are other, real terraces to be found by those who search diligently and know how to discriminate, terraces with a background that has grown up with the city, that strikes no foreign note in that harmony of form and colour, of clustering red-tiled roofs surmounted by domes, towers and spires, which is Prague. Such a terrace is that from which I write on my laptop. It is a real terrace, serving its original purpose in supporting a garden on a hillside. A garden carefully, fondly tended by generations of those who lived useful lives and looked out over the city from this point of view.

It is old, very old, this terrace, and it has witnessed many terrible scenes, fire and slaughter and religious strife, but it has also seen more that is ennobling and inspiring. In its strength this terrace has supported those who passed their days upon it, imbuing them, and those who live there yet, with the serenity that comes of a faith built on a sure foundation. This terrace is a bridge to the "Abiding City." It is not my intention to disclose the locality of this terrace; let every man find one to suit his own particular outlook.