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He is costumed in almost fairy-tale colors, conveying the image of an 18th-century composer donning distinctive garb - a bright-green knee-length jacket with gold buttons and trim, and of course the white pony-tail wig. The young salesman exudes the passion of the music we are about to hear.

“Tickets, tickets,” he trumpets, standing with a colleague also adorning a wig and the knee-high stockings worn by noblemen. The colleague's pale white and bold-blue jacket highlights a brilliant eye-catching pattern.

“I feel like I'm alive in Mozart's day,” I say to my wife Beth. We are wandering through Old Town Square, where the palaces, houses, and shops reflect sharp blues, yellows, and greens. I peek up at the turquoise cupolas of the white-walled Church of St. Nicholas. Indeed all the colors radiate a luminous quality -- adding a bit of brightness to the overcast winter.

Welcome to Prague. It's a town spanning a millennium - the last millennium to be precise. Amid the new wave of chic shops, expensive cars quietly revving, and 21st century enthusiasm, turn any street corner and your bound to see this city's proud Medieval and Baroque past. You simply can't miss it.

As we parade around Old Town Square, we don't really realize how we are almost tracing the footsteps of a prestigious part of Mozart's career. Just a five-minute jaunt by foot stands the white-columned, lime-green 18th-century Estates Theater, featured in the Oscar-winning film Amadeus. The real Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart also performed there in 1787 for the debut of his opera Don Giovanni.

Today, the music continues with the same fervor and zest. A Prague violinist enraptures us with soul-gripping notes from Mozart and Bach.

in a Baroque-era concert hall - the oil portrait-decorated Chapel of Mirrors in the Clementinum, a former Jesuit College that is now part of the National Library.

Such daily classical music concerts are as common as street musicians bellowing their songs and plucking their guitars, say in Nashville or New York. But the venues here are hardly a mixture of street commotion and cacophony. Trios, quintets, and small orchestras perform in some of Prague's most ornate musical halls and churches.

Baroque architecture screams ornate golden trims and giant carved columns. But just tilt your head upward in Old Town Square, and the city's Medieval past will take command of your view.

For example, there are the twin Gothic steeples of the 14th-century Church of Our Lady before Tyn, and the centuries-darkened brick and stone of the Old Town Hall Tower. From atop the tower echo the chimes that usually drown out the mechanized camera-clicks and chatter from tourists who come to see the tower's unique centerpiece - a 16th-century

A short time later, we find ourselves in yet another medieval setting. We're sitting at an old wooden table in one of the city's oldest beer halls. It's a cave-like restaurant -- once the underground cellars of a 14th-century monastery brewery.

We cross through Old Town to the edge of the Vltava River, where I am overcome with a flash of exhilaration. We find a sight from which postcards are

made. Before us is the statue-dotted Charles Bridge as a spotlighted Prague Castle in the distance cuts through the darkening dusk. Golden and amber hues shimmer along the water from an illuminated St. Vitus's Cathedral and the ring of palaces which crown the city's highest perch.

If Prague has a soul, it's right here. A nippy breeze howls across the river, smacking me with a damp chill to help awaken my imagination of centuries past. Chatter and commotion echo across the 14th-century Charles Bridge as we stroll by the evenly-spaced statues of Bohemia's saints and martyrs. All the way across, we admire the still breathtaking defining monument of Prague.

Majestic and imposing, St. Vitus's Cathedral glows high atop the distant hill, while casting an aura of this town's Medieval allure down the sweeping red-roofed slopes of Lesser Quarter.

Touring Prague Castle by foot is not for the aerobically challenged. We take the heart-pumping hike up the few-hundred steps to what the Czechs call Prazsky Hrad. St. Vitus's Cathedral is the resting place to about 15 Bohemian Kings, including Bohemia's founding father, St. Wenceslas, whose tomb is shrouded with a red and gold drape in a chapel bearing his name.

Golf ball-sized gemstones and Gothic frescoes highlight the walls. But a more poignant artifact is the bronze door ring on which King Wenceslas was said to have clung when he was murdered -- his brother ordered him slain with a sword. A painting of this powerful piece of history sits adjacent to the door.

Outside the cathedral stands yet one of the Czech capital's oldest religious structures - St. George's Basilica. The once rich tones of the blue and yellow frescoes have faded into the now dull, brownish ceiling there, where the 10th-century stone foundation adds to the Romanesque charm.

Prague's turbulent recent history is evident with a quick skip across town to Wenceslas Square. In eyeshot of the equestrian statue of St. Wenceslas lies the Monument to the Victims of Communism - a simple exhibition of flowers, crosses and photographs of those victimized. This unofficial shrine is well maintained since the Velvet Revolution of 1989, and remains a powerful remembrance of the decades of Communist repression.

Glitzy and high-dollar tastes of the West have certainly worked their way into the new democracy over the last decade. Neon lights of high fashion

stores and restaurants - ranging from Planet Hollywood to McDonald's - now dazzle the grand boulevards of Wenceslas Square. Once an old trading route, nearby Celetna Street is now home to trendy shops sporting the names Chanel, Armani, and Prada. Throughout the city, we see no shortage of window displays glittering with fine Bohemian Crystal.

Prague's historic sites are nestled in the city center within 10 to 30 minutes walking distance of each other. It's easy to take a relatively small number of footsteps to cover a millennium of history.

A short walk up the hill through Mala Strana ( Little or Lesser Quarter), is the grandiose Church of St. Nicholas -- Prague's paramount example of Baroque architecture (Prague has two St. Nicholas Churches, one in Little Quarter and the other already mentioned in Old Town). Inside, the bright pink and green pillars add brilliance to the gold painted trim. The 2,500-pipe organ here, was played by the hands of Mozart in 1787, and played again four years later, during a funeral mass in his memory.

Forming a semi-circle around St. Vitus's Cathedral is the four and five story-high stretch of a palace wing, which houses the Czech President's office. It's just one row of the palace labyrinth, which spans the length of five football fields. Two prominent art galleries are also within the Castle complex. St. George's Convent

has the most comprehensive collection of Bohemian Art, while the Picture Gallery of Prague Castle exhibits a small but impressive collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings. The Sternberg Palace, just outside the Castle entrance, houses a third gallery of mostly European paintings.

The Jewish Quarter is where yet another turbulent segment of the capital's long history took place. More than 100,000 bodies are buried -- up to 12 layers deep -- in the Old Jewish Cemetery between the 15th and 18th centuries. Some 12,000 jagged and decaying gravestones crowd the cramped grounds, making it one of the oldest and most notable Jewish resting places.

The Cemetery is one highlight of the Jewish Museum, where admission also includes entrance into synagogues dating back to the 13th century. The 15th century Pinkas Synagogue is now a memorial to the Czechoslovak Jews who died in the Holocaust. More than 77-thousand names painstakingly painted and

etched onto the walls -- completely covering the inside like solemn wallpaper. In a gruesome reminder of this tragic era, the Nazis had gathered many of the elaborate silver Torahs and other objects now in the Jewish Museum, with the intention of founding a museum of an extinct race.

When it's time for dinner, indulge in the rich and delicious meat sauces smothering our duck, pork and beef goulash plates, all served with the Bohemian staples of bread or potato dumplings. The Czech cuisine is basic and simple, but hearty and mouth-watering. Expensive, moderate and relatively cheap restaurants are found throughout the narrow streets and pedestrian walkways in central Prague. But you don't have to pay top dollar, or Czech crown for that matter, to eat well. A full course dinner for one begins at up to ten dollars, with some entrees costing as little as three dollars.