The starkly modern tower on a hill near the center of Prague is not a tourist attraction; it's not even open to the public.
But you see it almost immediately after climbing into a taxi for the ride from the Czech capital's main railroad station to it's beautifully preserved Old Town.The tower, glistening silver in the sunlight, is as potent a symbol of what's happened here lately as can be found.
Erected in 1987 to jam radio and TV signals from Western Europe, it now relays the short-wave broadcasts of the Voice of America and the BBC World Service to Prague's 1.7 million residents on standard FM frequencies.
"We always said that tower was the extended middle finder of the Communist Party, set up to let the people know who was boss," says a cabbie. "Things are quite different now."
And how! Russian troops pulled out of Czechoslovakia before they left any of the other Soviet satellites.
Swarms of tourists now make up a very different sort of occupying force. More than 60 million visitors came to Prague in 1991, meaning the city was host to an average of 165,000 tourists daily.
The total this year is expected to top 50 million, even though some Westerners have canceled reservations for fear that Slovakia's impending split from the rest of the country will lead to violence.
But there's never a sign of violence as more than 1,000 tourists gather hourly around the clock throughout the year in front of the 14th Century Old Town city hall to see medieval-era figurines do a mechanical dance every hour on the hour.
Crowds are so thick on the famed 700-year-old Charles Bridge across the Vltava River that it's often difficult to walk. The narrow Golden Lane beside the landmark Hradcany Castle feels like an anthill. A visitor can only move when the person in front of him or her does.
And capitalism has become king in this one-time communist stronghold.
Taxis are a good example. Some start their meters with a charge of 30 crowns (about $1.25) for the first kilometer, adding 20 crowns (about 80 cents) for each succeeding kilometer driven. Others start with 6 crowns (about 24 cents) and add charges in 6-crown increments.
Prices range everywhere in between, but a common rule of thumb is that the more luxurious the cab, the higher the fare for the same run.
It's the same with restaurants and hotels. Prices have soared in the three years since the bloodless Velvet Revolution, but how much depends on where you look.
The U Malira (At the Painter's) restaurant, serving French cuisine off a nondescript square in the Mala Strana district on the east bank of the river, gets more than 1,000 crowns (about $40) for a single serving of sirloin steak, without drinks or side dishes.
Meanwhile, the open-air Nebozizek restaurant, halfway up a hill in the Petrin Park east of the river and boasting the best view in the city, asks only 190 crowns (about $7.50) for a similar piece of meat.
Prices in Prague have risen dramatically since the communists left power, as some longtime aficionados lament, but some things in the city remain constant.
A single subway ticket still costs just four crowns (about 16 cents) and a one-week pass good on all buses, trolleys and subways, goes for the equivalent of $1.65.
The city itself hasn't changed a bit, either, even though travel agencies which once touted trips to the Crimea now hype holidays in Hawaii.
Prague remains the best-preserved medieval city in Europe, its almost magical spires untouched by flames or artillery in all Europe's wars of the last thousand years.
For museum-like gingerbread, the only comparable city is Venice, Italy, also almost entirely preserved. And like Venice, Prague now finds its landmark buildings threatened by smog.
"The pollution is especially damaging to roofs and is causing them to cave in," says one official of the Czech culture ministry. But thick black smoke continues to spew from factories all over the Czech countryside and clouds of diesel exhaust are like a plague on rural roads.
"No one in this country makes catalytic converters," says one car rental executive. "And even if they did, we are too poor just now to buy them."
Government officials estimate that about one of every 10 buildings in Old Town Prague is now threatened by smog.
But visitors see little of this if they stay in the squares that are Prague's main attractions. The Old Town's main square, for one, is lined by historic buildings whose facades have been sandblasted and given new coats of paint. Scaffolding has covered the landmark Powder Tower for months in another cleanup project.
There is no visible damage to the spindly 300-foot towers of St. Vitus Cathedral next to Hradcany Castle high on a hill overlooking the city.
Prague escaped physical harm from the Nazis, who occupied the city for seven years, because Adolf Hitler intended it to be the second-leading city of his empire, behind Berlin. The Germans even left the Old New Synagogue alone. Dating from 1276, it's now the oldest synagogue in Europe, spared by Hitler's yen to create a museum about the Jewish people, whom he planned to make extinct.
So Prague remains the city Goethe once called "The most precious stone in the stone crown of the world," even if the prices here aren't quite what they were two years ago, when the first flood of Western tourists hit town.
It's still possible to wander the cobbled streets of the inner city, tune out the hordes of tourists and the myriad vendors who pander to them, and imagine yourself a newly arrived traveler in the year 1320.
Around each corner there seemingly waits another charming view of the Town Hall tower, the Powder Tower or a beautifully preserved old church.
It's also easy to step back a few years and picture playwright Vaclav Havel wandering these same streets, never dreaming he would someday be the country's first modern elected president.
Havel's old flat is still in use, in a nondescript building fronting the river just two bridges (the city has 27) south of the landmark Charles Bridge.
The cafe where he hung out with other dissident writers during the communist reign is still open on the riverfront barely half a mile south of the modern, American-style Intercontinental Hotel.
And his plays - once banned in his own country while they were hits elsewhere in Europe - now are performed with a Chaucerian flavor in several languages in various theaters around town.
There's also shopping, especially for glass. Stores and vendors hawking Bohemian crystal and hand-woven linens and lace have sprung up all over town.
For the best bargains, stay clear of the hotly touristed central city and visit shops in outlying towns where prices can be less than one-fourth as high.
Another hint: Find out if a store is privately owned or still government property. Private owners are often willing to dicker on price, but there are no breaks in stores owned by the government.
Where to stay: Prague has everything from luxury hotels like the Intercontinental, with the city's best location and single rooms going for $220 a night, to small rooms in apartments and houses.
Other luxury hotels include the Ambassador on Wenceslas Square; the Forum, away from the central city, and the Palace, most expensive hostelry in town.
Hotels offering doubles for around $40 per night include the Tatra on Wenceslas Square and the Belvedere near the railroad station.
Dozens of other hostelries offer rooms as low as $20 without private baths and rooms in homes can cost even less.
But reservations are a must except for travelers staying in youth hostels or private rooms. Many hotels are booked up months in advance.
Getting there: Prague is less than three hours south of Berlin by car, about two hours drive north of Vienna. Easy train connections are available from those cities and many others in Western Europe. Most major European airlines, as well as the American carrier Delta, serve the city.