Prague in February 1991, photographs of a city in transition
In February 1991, just over a year after the Velvet Revolution, I discovered Prague for a few hours before travelling on for a report on Tatra. A first walk through a capital still largely untouched by mass tourism and Western consumer culture.
Discovering Prague after the fall of the Iron Curtain
I grew up during the Cold War. Like many people of my generation in Western Europe, most of what I knew about life on the other side of the Iron Curtain came from images shown on television.
Only a few reports showed everyday life in the countries of the Soviet bloc. Much of the information that reached us came from dissidents or political refugees who had managed to escape these regimes. French television channels also occasionally broadcast films produced in Eastern Europe, including films for children that could be purchased relatively cheaply. Even as a child, I sometimes sensed behaviours, attitudes and boundaries in these films that seemed strange to me, a form of soft propaganda aimed at younger audiences. It reminded me of some of the mechanisms of indoctrination that could also be found in a very strictly controlled religious education. Television news reported on the struggle of Solidarność in Poland and on the movements that were gradually challenging Communist regimes.
In my mind, these countries were associated with restrictions on freedom, the control exercised by their governments and, more broadly, the threat of nuclear confrontation that formed part of the mental landscape of the Cold War.
From 1989 onwards, everything began to change very quickly. Borders opened, the Berlin Wall fell and several Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe disappeared within a matter of months.
I felt immense hope for the people experiencing these upheavals, together with a strong desire to finally discover countries that, only a few years earlier, had seemed like a world that was difficult to access from the West.
Prague, Sunday 17 February 1991
The opportunity came in February 1991 during an assignment for L’Automobile Magazine.
I flew to Prague with journalist Daniel Nacass. Our final destination was Příbor, in Moravia, where we were due to visit the Tatra factory and find out how the manufacturer planned to face the opening of the car market to Western brands.
We arrived in Prague in the early afternoon on Sunday 17 February. L’Automobile Magazine had booked us into a modern four-star hotel, some distance from the city centre.
After dropping off our luggage, we went out to explore the city.
For this walk, I travelled light. I took only a Canon EOS-1 fitted with a Canon EF 20-35mm f/2.8L, a wide-angle zoom I regularly used for assignments at the time.
Looking back at these images today through the eyes of an architectural photographer, the converging verticals in some of the photographs taken from a low angle are obvious. I chose to preserve the images as they are, for their value as a record of Prague in February 1991.
We reached the centre and saw, among other places, the National Theatre and Nová scéna, before gradually making our way towards the Vltava and Charles Bridge.
Nová scéna – Prague – Czechoslovakia, February 1991 – Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
A city emerging from a long hibernation
From this first walk, Prague gave me the impression of a city emerging from a long hibernation.
Just over a year after the Velvet Revolution, the changes brought by the market economy were still barely visible. The consumer culture already established in major Western cities had made little impact on the urban landscape.
Traffic remained light in the streets we walked through. Most of the cars we saw were Škodas or models manufactured in other Eastern European countries. Western cars were still rare.
The façades also reflected this period. Some were magnificent, while many showed the effects of time. Walls were sometimes simply patched with areas of render, years before the major restoration programmes that would later transform the historic centre.
Prague – Czechoslovakia, February 1991 – Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
The shops and window displays remained relatively modest. Commercial advertising was scarce. Posters, on the other hand, regularly brought splashes of colour to the streets.
This aspect would become more significant when I returned to photograph Prague a few weeks later.
From Charles Bridge to Prague Castle
We continued our walk towards Charles Bridge.
Today, the continuous flow of visitors through Prague’s historic centre has profoundly changed the atmosphere of this place. In February 1991, Charles Bridge presented a very different scene.
There were relatively few people on the bridge, and the mass tourism that would transform the city over the following decades had yet to arrive. The people I photographed were simply dressed, and there were few outward signs of ostentation in the public space.
Charles Bridge – Prague – Czechoslovakia, February 1991 – Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
The Vltava was partly covered with ice and snow was still lying across the city.
We crossed Charles Bridge and continued walking towards Prague Castle. From the heights above the city, I photographed Prague’s snow-covered rooftops, with church towers and façades overlapping all the way to the horizon.
Snow-covered rooftops of Prague seen from Prague Castle – Czechoslovakia, February 1991 – Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
Prague’s architecture is spectacular, but the contrast with the everyday life surrounding it struck me just as strongly. The monuments had survived the centuries, while the streets, shops, cars and façades still bore very visible traces of the system from which the city had just emerged.
The following day, Prague from the car
On Monday 18 February, we were due to take a domestic flight to Ostrava before continuing to Příbor.
When we arrived at the airport, we discovered that our flight had been cancelled and that the route had in fact ceased operating several months earlier. We were told that the Soviet-built aircraft used on the service were no longer considered sufficiently safe.
We therefore hired a Škoda and decided to drive to Příbor.
As we crossed Prague before leaving the city, I took a few more photographs from the car. They show another side of the capital: broad avenues, trams, relatively light traffic and an urban landscape in which Western commercial signs were still almost entirely absent.
Driving through Prague after our flight to Ostrava was cancelled – Czechoslovakia, February 1991 – Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
We then left Prague and headed towards Moravia to continue our report on the Tatra 613 and the Příbor car factory.
A first visit that led to another
My first discovery of Prague ultimately lasted only a few hours on a Sunday afternoon, followed by one final drive across the city the next morning.
It was enough to make me want to return, spend more time walking through the city and photograph it more freely.
A few weeks later, in March 1991, I therefore returned to Prague for a stay entirely devoted to the city.
Thirty-five years later, in February 2026, I would return once again to the Czech capital, profoundly transformed in the meantime.
About the author
Sebastien Desnoulez is a photographer, author and image maker based in Paris. His work spans architectural photography, landscape photography and travel photography, with particular attention to composition, lines, light, blur and visual accidents. Trained in photography in the mid-1980s, he covered Formula 1 and reported from around the world before developing a fine art photography practice built around the tension between graphic rigour and visual instability. He also shares his technical experience through practical articles for passionate photographers, drawing on a strong visual culture acquired in both film and digital photography.
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