The question has been asked more than once: Which of the human arts has the strongest impact on people's lives?

Music, you say; painting, literature, drama. You can take your pick, of course, follow your inclination. But remember, these are not always with you, not always there.

If you visit Prague, you'll have your answer in a minute. Architecture.

Prague is a thousand-year-old city, the capital of the Czech Republic in Central Europe. Unlike many other European cities, it was never reduced to rubble by war, as, say, Warsaw or Berlin were. Much of what was built here over the centuries still stands. It presents itself as a living museum, in a way, and a repository of the high arts, old and new. It offers the music of its great composers: Smetana and Dvorak; the work of its innovative Art Nouveau painters, Gustav Klimt and Alphonse Mucha; the literature of Franz Kafka and Max Brod, the profound contemporary novels of Ivan Klima, the expatriate Milan Kundera. Even the schlock sold along tourist-clogged Karlova Street is higher-toned: Kafka T-shirts, Haydn coffee mugs.

Young men in powdered wigs and 17th-century dress stroll about handing out fliers advertising chamber music that afternoon in the Clementinum, the Baroque Jesuit College, or a Mozart "Requiem" at St. Nicholas' church in the evening. These Renaissance sandwich men will remind you, as if it had slipped your mind, that Mozart previewed "Don Giovanni" here in 1787. Prague hasn't changed all that much since then, except for the electricity, of course, the trams and metro, and all the tiny automobiles that crowd the warren of its streets, which no doubt are a lot cleaner.

Prague has its effect. It makes you deeply concerned with what fills your eyes each day as you emerge from your home or hotel room. It is possible that you could get accustomed to this voluptuous bounty of stone and mortar, of Gothic arch and Romanesque arcade, the steel and glistening brass of Art Nouveau hotels, the spear-like church spires that puncture the sky, and the frescoes painted on antique facades, which assert themselves in ocher, cream, faint pink, street after sinuous street, like envoys from another time, like strong ideas from the deep past still vibrant.

But you could never become indifferent to it unless you are made of stone yourself.

"Nothing I know about this other city of the seven hills has prepared me for its extravagance and abundance and endless visual surprises," wrote Eva Hoffman in "Exit into History," her book on Central Europe. "The eye cannot move without encountering a stunning piece of statuary, or painted decoration, or ornate architectural detail, or a Cubist thket of chimneys. The parts meld into a whole that yields a sort of aesthetic overcharge, an organic effect that is more than the sum of its components."

Prague's beloved river

The Vltava River reaches Prague after its long journey out of south Bohemia. It bisects the golden city, as Prague has been called, cuts east from west Mala Strana (the Little Quarter) from the Old Town. Then, by virtue of a sharp 90-degree turn where the stately Rudolfinium (home of the Czech Philharmonic) rises, it again divides the city: the Old Jewish Quarter with its archaic synagogues to the south, Letna Park to the north.

The Vltava (pronounced VUL-tah-vah) is majestic and dangerous, as the dams and locks here and there designed to constrain it, and the heavy log fortifications built to protect the stone piers of Prague's bridges, attest. It is busy with fishermen who troll from small boats and angle from the banks; canoeists and paddle boaters test its rushing current; ponderous sight-seeing yachts cruise up and down. There are cafes along the Vltava's banks, and the islands in the stream are parks for concerts and youth fairs and puppet shows (Czechs are big on puppets).

This broad, copper-colored highway of water is known more widely outside the country as the Moldau, the German name rarely used here. It is the river whose spirit was captured by Smetana in his symphonic poem of that name, which you will hear over and over again as you meander through Prague's twisty streets, checking out the rare books and print shops, or the frequent emporiums offering the ethereal Bohemian glass.

Of the many bridges that knit the Czech capital together, none is the equal of the Charles Bridge, a graceful Gothic span begun in 1357. It took 50 years to finish. It is a national cultural monument. It is also a busy pedestrian bridge, and the commercial and social activity it encourages -- puppeteers, caricaturists (there is even a mad artist, who wears horns on his head, a perpetual look of insanity and paints crazy pictures), buskers, photographers and such -- is carried out under the gaze of 30 enormous sculpted saints erected upon the balustrades. From the start, the bridge was a center of communal affairs: in medieval times they used to bring dishonest bakers there to dunk them in the river.

A short walk to the east of the Charles Bridge and you are in the Old Town Square, a vast plaza dominated by the Old Town Hall, which is adorned by the Astronomical Clock. This remarkable piece of 15th-century machinery -- which tells the time and date and gives the position of the stars in the heavens -- draws tourists to it every hour like metal shavings to a magnet. When the bells start tolling, two windows open above the clock face, and images of the Apostles appear and glide by as cameras click and flash below and video machines whirr.

Beyond the Charles Bridge, to the west, Prague rises gently, terrace upon terrace of terra-cotta roofs and hanging gardens that seem oddly tropical. Above all rises Prague Castle, a cream-colored complex of fine buildings, and off to the left you can see verdant hills and what appears to be an orchard. Within the castle walls, and rising higher still, are the black spires of the Gothic Cathedral of St. Vitus, possibly the most extravagant edifice in this extravagant city.

Healing from communism

Susana and I first came here in 1992 for our 30th wedding anniversary. It was in November. It was cold, relentlessly gray. The buildings around and near the Old Town Square, especially Tyn Church, and the Powder Tower down Celetna Street, were imposing, but seemed more like immense shadows, like mountains sculpted from rain clouds, rather than the concrete monuments to other times that they actually are. It was too frigid to sit in the plaza and admire the arresting statue of Jan Hus, the Reformation leader, too inclement to drink the famous Czech Pilsner out of doors, too discouraging to argue with surly waiters. Not entirely satisfied, we went off to Vienna.

But before we did, we dutifully threaded our way through the Old-New Synagogue and the Old Jewish Cemetery; we were buffeted by the winds coursing down the river on our stroll across the Charles Bridge, and our climb up Castle Hill. We watched the changing of the guard in the castle courtyard, a bravura exercise in rifle acrobatics choreographed by Theodor Pistek Jr., a leading theatrical designer. All this was ordered up by President Vaclav Havel. He had been to London; he was aware of the appetite among visitors for the kind of showy close-order drill that goes on at Buckingham Palace. He would arrange a better show. Maybe he did.

No sooner did we get back to Prague in June of this year than it all became clear what had been wrong back then. We even came to understand the disagreeableness of the waiters. In 1992 Czechoslovakia (as it was called before the Velvet Divorce from Slovakia in 1993) was only recently free of the communists who ran it for 40 years, but hardly free of the mentality those years had instilled. Communist regimes can be effective at turning out prodigious amounts of raw steel, but are never good at producing courteous serving people, or a population with much in the way of expectations or free of cynicism.

So much had changed over the past seven years, and the weather was fine. We were vaguely aware during that first visit that young Americans and West Europeans were even then pouring into Prague, bringing their money and talents. They were teaching English, writing books, making movies, founding newspapers, opening pubs and restaurants, bookstores and record shops. They were trying to describe an atmosphere, build a myth -- or possibly seeking to re-animate a moribund myth: Prague, somebody declared, was the "the Left Bank of the Nineties," a strange expression with retro suggestions, presumably designed to encompass notions of romance, youth and its possibilities, art and bohemianism, and to capture in words the spirit they all felt moving among them back then. (Prague is, after all, in Bohemia.)

In seven years, Prague had grown softer, brighter; the newness of its oldness, so to speak, had worn off, to its great benefit. A more realistic sense of possibility is evident today. Though the country is currently in an economic slump, no one doubts that this Central European country will sooner or later be in the European Union, as it is already in NATO, and definitively Westernized.

A walking tour

Prague is a city made for walking. From the Rudolfinium, for instance, you can cover most of the old Jewish ghetto area in a couple of hours, visit the High Synagogue, the Pinkas Synagogue, the Spanish Synagogue and St. Castullus' Church. From there, you can leg it over to Republican Square, marvel at the Municipal House -- maybe the most stunning example of Art Nouveau architecture anywhere -- have lunch in the Hotel Pariz, then cross the river for a stroll through the tender streets of Mala Strana, which edges the river below the castle. There are fine museums, such as the new, intimate Mucha Museum, dedicated to the painter whose hand is everywhere evident in the city, even on the crown notes, which he helped design more than 80 years ago when Czechoslovakia came into being as a modern state.

After a couple of walking tours, the best way to relax is to find a chair in the Old Town Square and order up a pint of Budweiser Budwar. It will cost a little more there than elsewhere in town (maybe 35 cents), but it's worth it for the show. You can watch the tourists move about the great square, tourists like yourself, many in small tight packs, their guides holding aloft little flags to keep everybody together: French, Germans, Italians, maybe Poles and Hungarians, not to mention your fellow Americans.

The Budweiser is certainly not the stuff usually sold under that name back home. It is produced by a state-owned brewery down in Ceske Budejovice, in south Bohemia, about which more later. The waiter who delivers it to you may or may not smile, but certainly won't growl at you, or suggest that he is doing you a favor by doing his job. Give him a small tip. Feed his incipient faith in the rewards of the market.

Sophisticated travel writers tend to turn their noses up at Czech cuisine. One friend warned me that Prague is not the place to go if you have a problem with cholesterol. It's all pork and dumplings and cabbage. You know, comfort food.

By our way of thinking, there is nothing really wrong with roast pork and dumplings, if it's well made. And it is. It is also cheap: over a period of nine days, five in Prague and four in southern Bohemia, we never paid more than $20 for dinner for the two of us. Our usual bill came to about $15. And we ate things other than pork: rabbit (with dumplings), duck (dumplings again), wild boar (what else?), venison (yep), goulash, even carp -- about which more later, as well.

Czechs, we discovered, are not enamored of the kind of green food favored in the United States, salads and other vegetables.

Before we left for the south, we climbed again up to the castle, which affords the best view of the city. It was late afternoon and we found ourselves in a room with a sky painted on the ceiling and peach-colored walls all lighted by the sun streaming in through its high windows. We were in the Lobkovic Palace, listening to the Jupiter Quartet perform some Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart and Gershwin. Before we came, I was advised by a photographer in Washington, Chad Evans Wyatt, who does a lot of work in Prague, that chamber music was a flourishing art form here. The performance proved his point, and it occurred to me that nothing could be more appropriate for this place than these small, intimate concerts. Prague teems with accomplished people trained in classical music; it harbors a broad and receptive audience. And equally important, with all its fine palaces and grand mansions, it has more venues for the perfect execution of this music than one can count, and a disposition by the government to encourage it. The concert lasted an hour; it cost $12 a ticket. Afterward we walked down the stone steps into Mala Strana.

Sylvan Bohemia

It took us about 3 1/2 hours to reach the small town of Rybnik in Bohemia south of Ceske Budejovice. It was a slow ride on an old but comfortable train and we were the only ones in our compartment. The fare from Prague was $14 for the two of us.

Bohemia is one of the breadbasket regions of Central Europe, but also holds much of the industry of the Czech Republic. The Austrian Hapsburg Empire, which used to rule the Czech lands, put its factories here in the 19th century, and for that reason Czechoslovakia became one of the first industrialized countries in Europe. The train clicks slowly through deep black forests, by the occasional gully channeling a tumbling stream, over gently swelling fields of wheat and through expanses of yellow blossoms from oil seed crops. It is a soft, almost pillowy landscape, and here and there you see people working in the fields, forking hay into wagons, like figures in a John Constable painting.

It was a warm day, and in this place of such sylvan appeal you would almost expect a satyr to come gamboling through the willows. Instead, we passed neat little houses, unconnected to any town, emerging among the trees, with people outside in shorts and bathing suits tending their gardens, or sitting immobile in the sun. One man in green shorts, his legs white as flour, wields a weed eater, breaking the bucolic spell. Then we pass on to more forest, then see many ponds and lakes with people lounging on their banks.

It's nearly 7 in the evening when we roll into the tiny town of Rybnik, and meet Jaroslav, our translator and driver. But he is more: Jaroslav manages the famous Rozmberk Castle in the village of that name. This is a soaring, black and white fortress built upon an enormous ridge that falls down to a small, vigorous stream. This, we learn, is the young Vlatava; it is born in this Bohemian forest.

Jaroslav puts us up in a cottage just across the wooden bridge to the castle gate. But first we go inside, agree on how much we will pay him for his services over the next three days as driver and guide (we settle on $250). We are in his capacious, sun-filled office behind the castle wall. As you look out, you see the sky and the pine-congested tip of the hill beyond the river.

"Have a Budweiser?" he asks.

He tells how the Anheuser-Busch people came to Ceske Budejovice some years back and tried to buy into the state-run Budweiser Budwar brewery, which was taking its first faltering steps toward privatization. Beer drinkers throughout Europe suspected operatic treachery: They were fearful the gigantic "This Bud's-for-you" conglomerate from America wanted to take control of Budweiser Budwar only to put it to sleep, and thereby put an end to this venerable Czech brewery which, owing to its name, seems to have gotten into the craw of the eponymous giant from St. Louis.

But they did not succeed in acquiring an interest in Budweiser Budwar, so they went away.

"We were all very relieved," said Jaroslav. "Budweiser [the American version] is like water to me."

He took a long draft of the real thing, which is not at all like water.

Empty frontier

Jaroslav, we learned over the next few days riding around this verdant land, was not an ordinary man. He is a baseball fan, unusual considering that Central Europeans are hardly mad for America's Pastime. He explained that, as a boy he wanted to play soccer, so he approached a team in the town where he lived north of Prague. "It was too political," he said. "They wanted me to join the [communist] party. I didn't want to be a communist."

He then determined to find a sport no one else could understand, just to be free of unwanted entanglements. Baseball was his bolt to freedom. He read about the game, and said he even wrote a letter to the Louisville Slugger company (which sent him some bats) and he organized a team. As he grew older, he stopped playing and started teaching in high school, and coaching. His son plays now, though there aren't that many teams in the country.

Bohemia is full of castles, palaces and historic towns. Jaroslav drove us to Cesky Krumlov. It is a medieval town, perfectly preserved, with a chateau, filled with Renaissance art and dark furniture. It soars above the the rushing Vltava, which seems to be everywhere. People fish the Vltava, for trout, which they then turn loose, because it's illegal to keep them.

The following day, on a ride down near the Austrian border, and after passing through a number of small towns, each with its exquisite Baroque church, I mentioned how depopulated the region seemed. Jaroslav explained that during the communist years no houses were permitted within 5 kilometers of the Austrian order; it was kind of a no-man's-land. He showed us where the fences had been to keep the Czechs in. Also, this was the region where many Germans had lived, and who had been expelled from the country after World War II. And since much of the land is still claimed by those exiled former Czech citizens, people are discouraged from building.

"We could only travel around in this little prison of ours," said Jaroslav, recalling the ban on foreign travel. He seemed somewhat disappointed over the way most Czechs acquiesced to their own imprisonment during the communist years. "People were happy just to have food and beer in their stomachs."

Jaroslav is portly, a bit unkempt and amiable. He is 45 and has been managing the castle museum for about seven years. He won the job in a competition that he entered as a way of escaping the town he lived in with his wife and two children who, he said, were suffering from the industrial pollution of the place.

He doesn't talk about traveling himself much, but seems hopeful, nonetheless. "Maybe my son can live better in this country than I did," he says.

An encounter with carp

In addition to castles and medieval towns, Bohemia is dotted with an uncountable number of lakes and ponds. These, Jaroslav explained, were dug out in the 17th century on orders by one of the Bohemian aristocrats, who connected them all by canals. They were put there as habitats for carp.

Nothing, it seems, awakens the taste buds of Bohemians like the slimy carp. Carp is not only a preferred dish in the region, it is a ceremonial food, a holiday cuisine. "We eat it before we go in to the presents on Christmas Eve," said Jaroslav.

From the moment the word was uttered, I suspected there was a carp swimming around in my future. I was right: The encounter occurred at a restaurant at the center of a lovely natural park where we stopped on our way south of Ceske Krumlov. Jaroslav was eager for lunch. I was uncertain. Why? Because I had met the carp much, much earlier in my life, when I was a boy. We used to fish for it in the Schuylkill River, a sullen gray stream that divides Philadelphia against itself. We used balls of wet bread and flour for bait. I ate the fish once. I thought it tasted like the bait.

At the inn, a white-walled and airy place, they prepared carp in two ways: fried and grilled. I ordered mine fried, reasoning that frying things often diminishes the real taste of the stuff being cooked, while grilled stuff, well, you know. When the waitress came, she put the fried fish in front of my wife, and I, to my dismay, drew the grilled.

Susana seemed to get through the experience without discomfort. She said she didn't find the fish offensive, though nothing to celebrate. She suggested my revulsion probably had something to do with an unpleasant childhood incident. I agreed. The incident was the eating of carp.

Jaroslav, his lips glistening with carp grease, seemed in a high state of excitation. He smiled. I smiled back and had another beer. When he asked what I thought of it, I murmured something indistinct, noncommittal, and smiled again. "Cheers!"

A couple of days later, Jaroslav drove us to the main train station at Ceske Budejovice. We bid him goodbye and promised to keep in touch (which we have) and went into the cafe to await our train. When the waiter came, we ordered two Budweisers, in the home of the true king of beers.

It occurred to me how wonderful this beer would be with crabs. Crabs. Not carp.

WHEN YOU GO

Getting there: Continental Airlines in association with Czech Airlines offers flights from BWI to Prague via Newark at a variety of prices, running from a low of $493 round-trip coach re, beginning in November, to one slightly over $600 in the spring, and up to and above $1,000 in the peak summer months.

Where to stay: There is a great variety of accommodations in the Czech capital, ranging from the costly to the more than reasonable. The Grand Hotel Bohemia near the Old Town Square, for instance, will ask $200 a night and up for a double. The Central Hotel, near Republic Square, offers spare but adequate doubles for less than $100. For those on a budget, there are numerous bed and breakfasts available around the city. You might want to check the Prague Post online (www.praguepost.cz).

Nightlife: The Czechs have been cultivating jazz for many years, and as a result the city has a number of venues where this music is performed. They come and go, however, so it is a good idea to get some information on them at the tourist office, right next to the Old Town Hall.

What to buy: In addition to the usual souvenirs -- T-shirts, mugs, artfully made models of typical Prague buildings, and other relatively cheap items -- fine wine glasses and other elegant vessels made by Bohemian glassmakers are sold all over the downtown.

Tips:

You can buy tourist passes at most tobacconists or kiosks in Prague. They are cheap and give you access to all the city's trams and its metro, which is clean, safe and efficient. You can purchase such passes for a full week, or for as short a duration as 15 minutes, time for one ride. Don't get on a public transport if your pass has expired. Inspectors check frequently and the fine is heavy for trying to cheat.

Avoid the city's taxis. They are wildly overpriced. Instead, if you must go by taxi, purchase a telephone card first, also at most kiosks. Use this in any of the many public phones around Prague to call one of the AAA metered cabs. The number is 10-89. They will send a cab to your curbside in a jiffy with a fair price. Make sure the expected cost is agreed on with the driver before you depart. Further, when you arrive at the Prague airport, taxis will offer to take you downtown for about 700 Crowns. This is about $20. Go instead to the white vans, which will take you directly to the center of town, Republic Square, for about 90 crowns, less than $3.

Information: Czech Republic: Central European Holidays, 10 E. 40th St., Suite 3604, New York, N.Y. 10016; 212-689-9720, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays.

-- Rich O'Mara

AN IDEAL DAY

9 a.m.: Make your way to one of the outdoor cafes in the Old Town Square or near the river in Mala Strana for coffee and bread or cakes for breakfast.

10 a.m.: Tour the Old Town area (Stare Mesto), starting with the Old Town Hall, where the Astronomical Clock puts on its hourly show. From there walk down Celetna Street to the Powder Tower, which in summer is open to the public. When you come out, walk next door to the Municipal Building, one of the most graceful Art Nouveau buildings in the Czech capital and visit its rooms.

Noon: Walk back through the Old Town Square to the Charles Bridge. The bridge, considering the great variety of free entertainment it offers, will easily keep you busy for at least an hour. Before going onto the bridge stop in at the Smetana Museum; on the way out, buy one of the recordings of his "Moldau."

2 p.m.: Have a late lunch outside at one of the various cafes and restaurants in Mala Strana: cold plates of ham and pieces of fish, cole slaw, pate.

3 p.m.: Fortified and rested, climb the steps up to the Hradcany Castle to catch the changing of the guard in the castle courtyard. Tour St. Vitus Cathedral, visit Golden Lane, an array of tiny shops where the castle guards and artisans once lived. These shops, it is said, were where medieval alchemists labored.

5 p.m.: For laughs you might want to stop at the Museum of Torture Instruments, or take in an afternoon chamber music concert at Lobkovic Palace, both up on Castle Hill.

7:30 p.m.: Dinner. Two options. First, U Supa at Celetna 22, near the Old Town Square. Traditional Czech dishes: pork and sauerkraut and dumplings. Second, U Su Tomase, in Mala Strana at Letenska 12. Venison and dumplings, good Dunkles beer.

-- Rich O'Mara