Going out in post-revolution but pre-renovation Prague

Some years ago I attended a news conference at an upmarket Italian style restaurant in Prague’s Slovanský dům, a palace at the Náměstí Republiky end of Na Příkopě St. The event, something to do with athletics, took place outside in the then quite recently renovated building’s courtyard. It was at least five minutes before it hit me – wait a second, I know this place, this used to be the beer garden!

Heaven knows how many evenings I had spent in that very space a decade earlier. The beer garden was leafy, lively, big, cheap and about as central as it gets. It was also the place where, a few days into my first visit to Prague in 1992, I chipped a tooth on an extremely stale piece of Šumava bread.

Today Slovanský dům, which means Slavic House, is home to shops, offices, a multiplex cinema and several eateries, with the Italian style place mentioned above where the Czech president likes to hold celebrations. But in the early 1990s it had clearly seen better days. It hadn’t always been “Slavic” either – apparently from the 1870s to 1945 it was home to a German casino and was known as Deutsches Haus.

When my mates and I were frequenting Slovanský dům the word was that it had served as a social centre for Nazi officers during the war. I’ve never come across any substantiation of that claim, but there was certainly enough faded grandeur about the place to make it seem plausible.

As well as the beer garden outside, a large part of the interior was in those days home to one of the best nightclubs I’ve ever been to. The Tam Tam had a room with nice lighting and mellow music, a bigger, louder bar area and a large hall that served as a music venue. It took me right back when I found myself at a party in that hall – now all shiny and new – after a film premiere about a year and a half ago. Wandering into to a room next door also brought a sense of déjà vu – it was there we watched the 1994 World Cup.

Often if we weren’t drinking in Slovanský dům we were to be found at the nearby Obecní dům, for my money the most magnificent building in a city that’s full of them. Pre-renovation, it was also home to pubs and a club.

At the time carousing in such places was just one more thing that made Prague great. But now I realise that we – and the pub and club operators – were enjoying a brief window between the fall of communism and the renewal that was bound to follow once capitalism gained traction. It was good while it lasted.