Lucerna Palace

The most elegant of Nové Město’s many shopping arcades runs beneath the Art Nouveau Lucerna Palace (1920), between Štěpánská and Vodičkova streets. The complex was designed by Václav Havel (grandfather of the expresident), and is still partially owned by the family. It includes theatres, a cinema, shops, a rock club and several cafés and restaurants. In the marbled atrium hangs artist David Černý’s sculpture Horse, a wryly amusing counterpart to the equestrian statue of St Wenceslas in Wenceslas Square. Here St Wenceslas sits astride a horse that is decidedly dead; Černý never comments on the meaning of his works, but it’s safe to assume that this Wenceslas (Václav in Czech) is a reference to Václav Klaus, former prime minister and now president of the Czech Republic. The neighbouring Novák Arcade, connected to the Lucerna and riddled by a maze of passages, has one of Prague’s finest Art Nouveau façades (overlooking Vodičkova), complete with mosaics of country life.