Prague

This Month in Prague:

Shopping: Why not come home with a real piece of Czech heritage in the form of a handcrafted marionette? Truhlar Marionety specialise in the craft, creating unique works of traditional art (5 U Luzickeho seminare, Mala Strana, marionety.com).

Sightseeing: Going into its 67th year, the respected Prague Spring International Music Festival (12 May - 3 June) continues its tradition of inviting the brightest stars in classical music from around the world. Vasilij Petrenko leads the Czech Philharmonic in the opening concert performing Smetana's My Vlast on 12 May (festival.cz).

Prague News & Gossip

Secret Eating

You can always rely on Parisians to put food first. Now those Gallic gastronomes have come up with a tasty solution to eating out without breaking the bank. A growing trend for cave à manger - or cellar dining - has seen some of the finest wine cellars in Paris add tables and chairs to become makeshift restaurants. The plates of food offered are quite often small - similar to Spanish tapas - but the menus are lovingly created with market-fresh produce and paired with the perfect vin.

Leading the scene is Betrand Bluy, whose wine cellar/deli/eaterie, Les Papilles (30 Rue Gay Lussac, tel: +33 [0]1 4325 2079, lespapillesparis.fr), off ers a €16 pick-of-the-market set menu that changes every day. "I bought a wine cellar and thought it would be nice to also have a little restaurant - I wanted to bring to it the high standards from Michelin-starred restaurants," Bluy explains. "People started loving the concept, as well as the food and wine."

One of the beauties of dining this way is that it allows you to have a dish or two in one place, then hop over to another - or even enjoy a cellar crawl. Le Verre Volé (67 Rue de Lancry; tel: +33 (0) 1 4803 1734, leverrevole.fr), a tiny wine cellar on the banks of Canal St Martin, is a good follow-on spot. There's a buzz in this intimate venue, where the day's culinary off erings (from €8) are scrawled onto a blackboard on the wall, alongside the vast wine list. Dinner here might mean pearlescent mackerel ceviche with a zingy citrus marinade and silky beef carpaccio washed down with a couple of glasses of Sancerre.

And for a communal take on the cellar trend, head downstairs at La Cave de L'Os à Moëlle (181 Rue de Lourmel, tel: +33 (0) 1 4557 2828), where everyone squeezes onto one table to enjoy a shared meal deal of breads, crudities and a dish of the day. Naturally, you can be sure of a pretty decent bottle of wine too.

Three more cellars for the subterranean gourmet

Botin 

MADRID Guinness-listed as the oldest restaurant in the world, Botin has been serving hungry madrileños since 1725. Ask to eat in the bodega (wine cellar), for the finest Castilian suckling pig amid the bottles. (17 Calle de los Cuchilleros, tel: +34 913 664 217, botin.es)

Melker Stiftskeller  

VIENNA Feel spiritual, and not just in the boozy sense, with dinner in a space that was once a chapel and where there was a wine cellar as long ago as 1629. Be sure to try the house special: pork knuckle. (3 Schottengasse, tel +43 1 533 5530, melkerstiftskeller.at)

Bily Konicek

PRAGUE Set in a stunning medieval cellar just off the Old Town Square, this restaurant and jazz club has become a popular place to enjoy a candlelit, luxurious meal. The music starts at 8pm. (20 Staromestské nám, tel: +420 221 421 160, bilykonicek.com)

Prague Trivia

• May: Take a moment to touch the bronze plaque beneath St. John of Nepomuk's statue on Charles Bridge to ensure a speedy return to the wonderful city of Prague.

• April: Marking the end of winter is one of the more unusual Czech traditions, the Burning of the Witches (30 April), which dates back to pagan times. In Prague, huge bonfires are lit in Kampa Park and Petrin Hill.

• March: Being home to some of the world's best beer (Pilsner Urquell, Budweiser Budvar) is a real point of pride for Czechs. In fact, they down as much as 157 litres of brew per capita yearly, officially making Czechs the world's top beer consumers!

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