Child’s play in Prague

I’m suspended in a glass observation pod, clamped to a 216m tower – the highest building in the Czech capital, Prague – and I’m beginning to freak out.

But Katerina tells me it was built in the Eighties so the former communist regime could block incoming TV and radio signals from the West.

I now see adults stifled by totalitarianism, their identities lost and growth stunted. They scale the tower but make no headway. I feel embarrassed that I was initially repulsed by them. Černý has delivered his message. 

I’ve come, however, to explore the city’s emerging districts and experience the grittier side of this ridiculously romantic capital.

The hotel’s entertained celebrities Kylie Minogue, Madonna and the Dalai Lama. But Lenka Rogerova, who shows me around, won’t be drawn on rumours that Quentin Tarantino is a present guest.

Instead, she shares a story about how Gwen Stefani secretly shot a music video.

‘Our security manager was doing his rounds, when there she was, in a corridor, lying on the floor,’ she says.

It was here, on the site of a Renaissance chapel that workers made the most exciting discovery of all, unearthing the remains of a 14th-century Gothic chapel. The ruins are displayed under a glass floor. I pad across history in my slippers, wondering what the monks would have made of it all.

For the purposes of symbolism, I’d like to think that the trio has somehow managed to crawl here, wrenching themselves free from communism, to play, as children should, in the park.