LETTRE DE PRAGUE
Prague, 31 October 2025
My dear reader,
I love writing to you from places that are a little unexpected, chosen with care, as if to capture a fleeting instant, a suspended moment, and fix on paper a small fragment of the present that will never come again.
Today, I’m writing to you from Prague, from number 211 Nerudova Street, a former baroque residence from the eighteenth century, now turned into a hotel in the picturesque district of Malá Strana, at the foot of Prague Castle. I once lived here years ago, during a year of study at the University of Economics, and coming back feels like opening a book I had long since closed.
It’s the 31st of October, a little after 5:30 p.m., and the sun has been gone for about an hour. It always feels a little strange, the light fades so early that the day suddenly seems to stretch longer, as if time itself had slowed down for our pleasure. The weather has been glorious all day, that kind of dry, crystalline cold with no wind, when the sky stays blue and the low sun gilds the façades before quietly disappearing.
I’m writing from a small writing desk tucked into an alcove: a walnut plank wedged between two walls, facing a white wall touched with a hint of blue. To the left, a few old books; to the right, a bedside lamp, my only light. Usually, I love a desk with a view, but strangely, I like this one. It feels like being nestled in a quiet corner of our room, or rather, our suite.
The hotel is not grand or ostentatious. It’s neither a Parisian palace nor a Haussmannian building, but it has that discreet, almost humble beauty I so adore. The high ceilings, the Versailles-style parquet floors, the white windows with their gilded handles, and above all, the painted wooden ceilings, an exuberant world of florals, birds, vases, and baroque symbols. Each panel offers a different miniature: here a lion, there a crane, elsewhere a basket of flowers. The paint, applied in tempera on wood, blends ochres, reds, soft blues, and pale almond greens into a typically Bohemian harmony. It carries that Central European sensibility, between Renaissance order and baroque exuberance, where every detail seems designed to defy the grey of a Prague winter with a touch of color.
What happiness, upon waking, to open one’s eyes to this painted sky of patterns: scrolls, arabesques, stylized leaves, birds, and fruit. Who would have thought that a ceiling could influence one’s mood? It’s a detail we too often forget in our modern interiors, where color has fled, replaced by whites, beiges, and greys.
But this hotel masters what I would call the art of little nothings that make the great everything (“l’art des petits riens qui font les grands tout”). A book left on the bedside table, Prague Tales by Jan Neruda. A basket of apples and oranges. A small dish of candies near the door. A cappuccino offered by the house. A handwritten note on the bed, welcoming us and recounting the story of the house…
All these gestures cost almost nothing, yet they change everything. And somehow, we’ve lost the habit of them, of doing, creating, giving. Our rational minds call them useless, unprofitable, a waste of time. Because their effect cannot be measured. Because we believe they go unnoticed. Yet it is precisely these details that draw the tenderness of a place, the memory of a moment.
So, my dear reader, as I wondered in my previous letter from Samos what the purpose of travel really was, if it’s only to see in person what we’ve already seen online, I believe I’ve found an answer here, in Prague: To travel is to relearn how to notice. It is the art of detail, of attention, of the little nothings that make the great everything.
Perhaps beauty resides precisely there, in the things we too easily dismiss as useless. A postcard sent, a handwritten note, a few fresh flowers in a vase, a table set beautifully, even when no one is coming. These things serve no purpose except to make life more beautiful, and perhaps that is justification enough.
In a world that measures everything, they remind us that the essential cannot be measured. And that sometimes, a single detail is enough to bring back the light.
Léonce.
PS. Before I leave you with this thought, you’ll find a few photos from this stay below. I hope they might inspire you, one day, to visit Prague too. And as always, you can find all my favorite Prague addresses in Le Carnet d’Adresses. If you enjoyed this letter, you might send me a croissant. Un grand merci.
PPS. Can you spot me? I’m hidden somewhere in the last photo.
