Specialty coffee in Prague: 245 checked cafés

Coffee came to the Czech lands as a medicine: at first only pharmacies sold it, for stomach trouble. In Prague it was taken out onto the street by an Armenian merchant from Damascus, Georgius Deodatus, in a kaftan and shoes with upturned toes, carrying a tray and a pot on his turban. He made enough from it that by 1714 he had a café of his own, in a house whose three ostriches on the façade had been left by a previous owner, a feather dealer. That's how it all started here: a pharmacy, a turban and ostriches.