These days Prague is another victim of European over-tourism, but 30 years ago it still was a place of history and mystery. I recently saw the marvelous 1993 documentary below that has had me waxing nostalgic for the Prague that I first visited around the time the documentary was filmed. Prague Magic Lantern was written and presented by playwright Michael Frayn. Produced for BBC television, it is a personal view of the city’s political and cultural history which takes in the usual names and subjects: Rabbi Loew and his Golem, Emperor Rudolf II, Rudolf’s alchemists, artists and scholars, photographer Josef Sudek, Franz Kafka, puppets, and pivo.
Travel Between The Pages 
There’s nothing quite so strange as history, is there? A fascinating journey.
Prague in 1996 was a backpacker’s paradise. In 2001 the crowds were getting big but it was still fun. The images I see today, it looks like the lines at DisneyWorld.
All those traveling blogs have contributed to the phenomenon of over-tourism. Backpackers find a nice cheap place and swarm about it on their blog. Before you know it you have the tourism industry moving in. I’ve seen it happening all the time. When I find a nice place, I’m telling no-one anymore: not my relatives, not my friends, and definitively not on my blog. There will always be idiots who will draft a post about it in the hope of increasing their followership.