Landlocked Prague -- unlike, say, Venice -- has never experienced an influx of Far East cultural influence. So that the world's first Buddha-Bar Hotel is debuting in this most medieval of cities seems a curious incongruity (a second will open soon in Dubai, a more obvious marriage of flash and cash). But the Buddha Bar aesthetic has always been nothing if not shamelessly baroque, so perhaps it will actually fit quite comfortably within the Czech capital’s ornate cityscape.

Following a recent onslaught of trendy everythings in the once scruffy Czech capital, comes now a pair of gleaming 21st Century hotels. The sleek new 305-room Hilton Prague Old Town flaunts David Collins interiors inspired by Czech Modernism and Cubism, as well as an outpost of London’s Maze eatery, Gordon Ramsay’s first foray into the East. And the new Imperial Hotel, an Art Deco masterpiece that had faded into a grubby but weirdly opulent student flop, has just been glamorously gussied up.