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It’s habit-forming. Give the little ones their first taste finding faces on St Vitus’s Cathedral and they’ll have their heads pointed upwards for days. In addition to gargoyles, train your kids to spot the innumerable statues, house signs) and strange faces that adorn arches, cornices and gateways all over the city. Just take care that they don’t get stiff necks or stumble on uneven pavement surfaces.

Adventurous diners should take up the chef’s gauntlet: five courses whose identity is a mystery until they appear on your table.

Deitch was a little-known animator before he took a job producing films in Communist Czechoslovakia. He fell in love with the city and stayed.

Local resident Michal Fried dons a white cloak each night and leads visitors through an after-dark ramble around the Old Town in search of some of Prague’s ghostly nightlife. To join the tour, look out for the ghoulish-looking man standing beneath the Old Town Hall’s Astronomical Clock.

This restaurant offers the best of Dalmatian, Greek, Southern European and North African cooking.

Old European decorum meets Old European decadence: built in 1920, the Bohemia was home to one of Jazz-Age Prague’s liveliest clubs. Its 78 rooms were refurbished in 2002. The best views are from the eighth floor.

Author Božena Němcová based the narrator on her own grandmother, from whom she heard many of these stories.

Not quite as spicy as its Hungarian cousin, Czech goulash is essentially a rich beef stew minus the vegetables. Don’t even think of ordering it without knedliky dumplings on the side. Beef is the standard recipe of this staple dish, but you can sometimes find goulash using venison, chicken and even vegetarian variants.

When a young Slovak actress took off her clothes in Machatý’s Ecstasy (1932) it became the first film to feature nudity; the actress became Hedy Lamarr.