PRAGUE WEAVES MAGICAL SPELL OVER TRAVELERS.

Byline: Stacey Shervan Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Three weeks with the world at our fingertips. My friend Dawn Lasky and I were both in the mood to visit big cities filled with history - cities such as those in Central Europe open to Westerners only in the last few years.

Little did we know that Prague in the Czech Republic would be a magnet that would turn our planned three-day stay in the city into two weeks, leaving us one frantic week to complete the rest of our itinerary (Hungary, Romania, Poland and Austria).

I was unsure I wanted to spend even three days in Prague (Praha in Czech) when we arrived at Ruzyne Airport, and I took in the surroundings: gray, rainy, dismal.

But once in the city, we discovered a place that can only be described as magical, both in physical appearance and spirit. A city that, despite 41 years behind the Iron Curtain, retained the spark that gave it the reputation of being like Paris in the '20s.

Prague is divided down the middle by the Moldau (Vlatava) River. On the west side of the river is the Lesser City (Mala Strana), where its most famous landmark, Prague Castle (Hradcany), sits at the top of a hill. The east side of the river comprises the Old City (Stare Mesto) and the New City (Nove Mesto), which forms a semicircle around the Old City.

The central hub of the New City is Wenceslas Square (Vaclavske namesti), the site of almost every revolution in Prague from the Hussite revolt in 1419 to the Velvet Revolution in 1989, which brought a free and federalist constitution to the Czech Republic.

All of these areas are easily accessible by foot, which is the best way to take in the incredible architecture and charm of Prague.

We spent most of our time wandering the narrow, cobblestone streets of the Old City, awed by the magnificence of the area.

The Old Town Square (Staromestska namesti) is the center of the Old City and is one of the most beautiful spots in Prague. The square is comprised of palaces, churches and residential houses in a mixture of Rococo, Gothic and Baroque architecture.

Old Town Square became our hangout. We always ended up there to eat, drink or shop in the many outdoor cafes and variety of stores that have taken over the first floors of the buildings.

The main attraction in the square is the Old City Town Hall with its famous clock tower built in 1410. Each hour, the huge clock is a gathering place for tourists, as the moving figures put on a spectacular show. Of course, it took us five days to figure out what everybody was watching. We were looking at the wrong part of the clock.

Another fascinating area in the Old City not to be missed is the Old Jewish Quarter (Josefov), which, until Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, was a bustling community. The Jewish Cemetery here is a poignantly beautiful place where 12,000 tombstones lean on each other and the dead are buried 12 deep. And visiting the National Jewish Museum of Prague is an extremely moving experience. The museum displays drawings and writings by children interned at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

There are many bridges that link the two sides of the city. The best way to get to the Lesser City is by way of the Charles Bridge, a pedestrian walkway built by Charles IV in 1357. When the weather is nice, the bridge is like Old Town, filled with craftsmen, artists and street musicians.

The Lesser City has a different face from the Old City. Originally it was a neighborhood of simple workers and fishermen built in the shadow of Prague Castle. It is made up of winding, hilly, cobblestone streets with restaurants, shops and cafes.

The main attraction in the Lesser City is Prague Castle, which sits atop Prague's highest hill. Visible from almost anywhere in the city, the castle is a mix of different types of architecture surrounded by magnificent gardens.

The castle's construction was begun more than 1,000 years ago by the early Premyslid rulers, the founders of the city, and was expanded through the early 20th century. The first entrance, St. Matthews Gateway, is guarded by Czech soldiers who perform a changing-of-the-guard ceremony each hour. Through the gateway is the second courtyard, where the Rudolf Gallery houses a collection of exotic stuffed animals, alchemists' tools and shamanistic cult figures gathered by the last Prague emporer, Rudolf II.

In the third courtyard is St. Vitus Cathedral, the largest church in Prague. The cathedral is an incredible gothic building that was begun in 1344; additions were built until 1929. St. Wenceslas Chapel, at the south end of the cathedral, leads to the Chapel of the Holy Rood and down to the remains of the royal crypt with the sarcophagus of Charles IV.

On the other side of St. Vitus Cathedral is the Basilica of St. George, the best-preserved example of Romanesque architecture in the Czech Republic. Originally built in 920, it was reconstructed at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

Golden Lane, a street within the castle walls, was once home to craftsmen, goldsmiths and tailors. The small cottages now house antique shops, booksellers and a pub. Franz Kafka, author of ``The Metamorphosis,'' lived in House No. 22 in the early 20th century.

There are many sites to see in the New City - one of the best and busiest being Wenceslas Square, which is not a square at all but a broad boulevard dominated by a huge statue of St. Wenceslas erected in 1913. Originally intended to be a horse market and the central business hub of the New City, the square is now home to a number of Art Nouveau hotels, department stores, antique dealers, discos, coffeehouses, jazz clubs and souvenir shops. Tickets for concerts, shows and anything else happening in Prague can be found here.

Prague's night life has blossomed in the past seven years. Always known for its beer halls where intellectuals could congregate and discuss the ills of living under a communist regime, the city is now alive at night with outdoor classical music concerts, clubs featuring all types of live jazz performances and a number of bars and dance venues.

Dawn and I found our niche on our second night in Prague when we found Chapeau Rouge.

Chapeau Rouge was a meeting place for locals as well as expatriates who had visited Prague and been smitten. The bar was a microcosm of the city, filled with people who were both interested and interesting.

On any given night we might meet a Serbian bartender who had come to Prague a year earlier to escape the war, a drama student whose parents had fled Prague for Germany during the Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia, Dutch soldiers on leave from Bosnia-Herzegovina, a Czech violinist with one of Prague's many orchestras or one of the 30,000 or so Americans under age 40 who have relocated to Prague in the last seven years.

Each night we met more people, and each morning we extended our stay because we couldn't bear the thought of leaving. Every time we bade our new friends farewell for good, they said, ``See you tomorrow night.''

The next evening when we returned, they laughed.

They had all done the same thing.

On Location

For information about Prague, contact: Czech Embassy, 3900 Spring of Freedom St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008, [phone]; and, in Prague, Prague Information Service, Na prikope 20, phone [phone].

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--Color) Old Town Square, one of the biggest tourist attractions in Prague, is an example of the unusual architectural mix found in the city.

Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service

(2) Prague's Astronomical Clock, which dates to 1410, puts on a show for tourists each hour in front of the Old Town Hall.

Box: On Location (See text)