Famous son Franz Kafka once wrote that "Prague never lets you go." Seventeen years after the end of Communist rule, the Czech capital's cultural, culinary, and club scenes are in full swing—and its allure more potent that ever. Guy Martin reports

The whole gaucho-strapped-to-a-disco-crucifix routine worked as planned for Madonna on the European leg of her Confessions tour last summer. In Moscow, Russian Orthodox congregants assembled to drive a wooden stake through a large photograph of the singer, declaring that she was "under the influence of the devil." In Rome, prelates suggested she just go home. The concerts sold out, of course.

When she got to Prague, she met with the usual success: Miloslav Cardinal Vlk, the archbishop, lodged the now-obligatory diatribe against the "so-called Madonna," whereupon the so-called Madonna swiftly packed two nights at Skaza Arena with thousands of fans. Ever mindful of Prague's fizzy, meccalike party status among boulevardiers, glamorous ne'er-do-wells, and threadbare expats from all over, Madonna's managers scheduled a few days off for the still-agile diva to soak up what she could of the vibe.

Then, the Louis Vuitton company tried to rent the Charles Bridge. It was weird, but not as weird as it first seemed. Vuitton holds vintage car rallies. Last summer's was the Vuitton Classic Boheme Run. The rally was held between the old Hapsburg capitals of Budapest, Vienna, and Prague, a clever idea since—from the mid-1500s to World War I, approximately—those three towns formed the core of that Central European imperium. As the finale, Vuitton planned a catered, invitation-only party on the Charles Bridge for the evening of September 9, featuring Madonna (it was one of her days off). Reportedly, she was going to warble.

But asking to lock down the Charles Bridge turns out to be asking a lot. Rivaling the Hrad, or Prague Castle, as the city's best-known medieval icon, the bridge was built by King Charles IV in the 1350s, when he made Prague the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. Charles also laid out Nové Město (New Town) just south of Staré Město (Old Town), built large portions of the castle, began St. Vitus' Cathedral inside the castle walls, and founded Charles University, central Europe's oldest.

The bridge was Charles's communications and commercial infrastructure. Laid on the central axis linking the castle on the Vltava River's west bank with the more commercial Old and New Towns on the east, the bridge was from its inception a practical, quotidian tool. In six and a half centuries—under some twenty-two subsequent kings, four democratically elected presidents, four Communist puppets, and one premier deposed by Russians, not to mention a dozen wars—the bridge was rarely closed. The Nazis blocked it under a nightly curfew in 1942 as they hunted down the Czech resistance fighters who had assassinated Hitler's SS man in Prague, Reinhard Heydrich. Similarly, the Russians shut the bridge under a curfew during their invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, as some 650,000 Warsaw Pact troops crushed the country's growing opposition to Moscow in the bloodiest fashion, shooting women and children and grinding people under tank treads.