Dancing House

Prague's most famous modern building: two towers that lean together like a couple on the dance floor.

It was designed by the Czech architect Vlado Milunić with the American architect Frank Gehry and completed in 1996. The site on the Rašín Embankment had stood empty since a bombing raid in February 1945 destroyed the house that stood there. Václav Havel, who lived next door for years, supported the project.

The glass tower, pinched at the waist, and the solid tower with its wavy lines of windows earned the nickname *Ginger and Fred*, after the dancers Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. When it opened, many Praguers thought it had no place among the nineteenth-century façades of the embankment; today it is one of the city's best-loved landmarks.

The building mostly houses offices and a hotel, but there is a gallery and a rooftop bar with a view over the river to Prague Castle. It sits in the New Town, a short walk along the river from the National Theatre, and pairs well with a walk south to Vyšehrad.