Black-and-White of Prague

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Black-and-White of Prague





"the city that floats—not just on water, but in memory" — someone

Google reminded me today — a memory notification, just a small pop-up on my phone. It showed a photo from the early 2000s: Prague, captured in black and white. A quiet street, a wrought-iron gate, reflections in the water under a stone bridge. I tapped on the image and was suddenly pulled years back into a place that still feels like a dream. Were those moments real, or are they now just fragments stitched together by nostalgia and the melancholy of time?

We first visited Prague in the early 2000s. I remember the trip as a blur of narrow cobblestone alleys, soft footsteps echoing under arcades, and the ever-present aroma of roasted chestnuts from street vendors. It was winter. Or at least cold enough that our breaths were visible and our hands searched for warm café windows to rest beside.

Back then, I carried a small film camera — black-and-white only. I wanted the city to feel timeless. And it did. Prague, with its Gothic towers and Baroque facades, doesn’t just sit in time; it seems to ignore it. The images I took look like they could have been captured in 1923 or 2023. The absence of color somehow brings everything closer — the texture of walls, the details in ironwork, the soft light of lanterns at dusk.

One photo shows the entrance to a restaurant, tucked beneath a statue of a saint. I remember how quiet that corner was. A man passed us humming something in Czech. We never learned the song, but we hummed it for days. Another photo, a heavy iron gate opening into a peaceful courtyard, guarded by a fountain and leaves drifting across the stone floor. I didn’t know whose home or building it was. I still don’t. But I remember the silence there as something sacred.

The river, too, is part of the dream. A photo taken from beneath a bridge shows bare trees and their reflections, branches reaching into the water like ink lines on wet paper. That moment was still. You don’t get many moments like that in life.

And the doors — Prague’s doors are poetry. Curved iron vines, dark wood polished by a century of hands. One in particular remains vivid in my mind: an arched entrance framed by swirls of metal, like a frozen gust of wind. I stood there for too long, imagining stories that began and ended behind that door.

So, is it nostalgia or melancholy? I think it’s both. Prague is a city that welcomes such emotions. It doesn’t rush you. It allows you to walk slower, to listen harder, to remember more vividly. Today, as I scrolled through those black-and-white images, I realized I don’t just remember what we saw — I remember what we felt.

Prague hasn’t left me. It just sleeps somewhere in my memory, surfacing now and then — like today, through a notification. Black-and-white dreams, still alive