The tourists are stacked shoulder to shoulder on the Charles Bridge in Prague, which has become 'the new Venice'. But those who flow into the city in such vast numbers tend to flow straight out again, their Czech curiosity seemingly satisfied by a brief burst of bohemia.
Yet just an hour away, the real Bohemia beckons with ancient town squares, Gothic spires and bell towers, chateaux, gabled houses, frescoes, music and lazy rivers. Startlingly cheaper and a far less stressful experience than the capital, this great expanse conjures a mood evoked by classic fairytales.
And tales are being told. British newspaper The Times decreed, 'For a summer of culture with a dash of one-upmanship (the neighbours won't have heard of it), head for the Bohemian beauty of Cesky Krumlov, a pocket-sized Prague deserving its billing as the prettiest town in the Czech Republic.'
Bohemia, however, is not as bohemian as one might expect. Thanks to what one history text describes as 'the profound influence of the imported secondary meaning of the word', visitors are almost unconsciously on the lookout for beards, berets and bongos. The translation of the German word 'bohemian', now used only in poetic contexts, is Czesky, which also means Czech. Hence Bohemians prefer to call themselves simply Czechs to avoid confusion.
The first point of entry is the fortified town of Tabor, a centre of Gothic and Renaissance architecture 100km south and an hour by train from Prague. Founded in 1420 by radical Hussites following religious reformer Jan Hus, who was fleeing Catholic rule in Prague, theirs was to be a new form of society, an ideological Eden. For more than a decade its armies held out against popes and kings but it was all over in less than 15 years. What remains of that inspiring but disastrous nose snubbing are 12km of 15th-century tunnels below the town square, 800 metres of which are open to the public.
Visitors enter the tunnels through a small museum and gift shop. An increasingly popular attraction is the banquet room on the floor above, which has been used to shoot scenes in several movies, including Van Helsing, The Illusionist, XXX and Blade 2. In the square, the spirit of Cinema Paradiso is regularly evoked by travelling cinema companies, which unpack a large portable screen and draw the townsfolk for a night of flickering images under a starry sky.