Even the briefest of jaunts around Prague provides proof of the city's rich architectural legacy. But for those who don't know a buttress from a baluster or can't tell Art Deco from Art Nouveau, appreciating the city's most beautiful buildings just got a little easier.

Two enterprising art enthusiasts have launched a series of tourist-geared maps that pinpoint the best examples of select architectural styles around the city. The first in the series focuses on Prague's Cubist architecture.

František Staněk, owner of the Kubista Gallery shop in Old Town, came up with the idea for the series after customers demonstrated a clear demand. The shop is in the House of the Black Madonna, the same distinctive, Cubist-style building that houses the Museum of Czech Cubism.

"In the shop, more and more people were asking for information and wanted a map to help them go look at the things they saw on our posters and postcards," Staněk says. "Nothing like this existed before. We only had maps with lots of [architectural] styles all together."

Along with colleague Dana Petrboková, he enlisted the help of a local architectural expert and photographer. They decided to look beyond just the Cubist style, and the team has now planned a series of eight to 10 guides covering a wide range of architecture.

"We wanted to make something practical, nice-looking and sophisticated," Staněk says.

Along with charting the locations of each structure, the guides will also include a photo of each site, information about its design and construction and a summary of the architectural style's theoretical basis.

Next in line is a map focusing on the city's Art Deco buildings, scheduled to come out this fall. Early next year, there will be a guide on sites built under the influence of the Dutch De Stijl movement.

The Cubist map was chosen to be the first in the series because of the unique Czech flair for this architectural style. "Everyone knows about Cubism in French painting, but few people know about the existence of Czech-specific Cubism," Staněk says. "This style was [applied] nowhere else in the whole world."

Between 1910 and 1914, a small group of artists in Prague took the Cubist ideas coming out of Western Europe and applied them to architecture and design, forging their own distinct style. While the Western Cubist artists stuck to drawing, painting and sculpture, the Czech Cubists pushed the movement's boundaries, designing everything from Cubist teacups to lampposts.

Structures built in the Cubist style included a department store, a cemetery, apartment buildings, a theater and a factory. The movement was interrupted by the start of World War I, and although a few Cubist-influenced structures were built in Prague after the war, the movement never regained its momentum.

Today, many visitors are unaware of the unique Czech imprint on the Cubist style, according to Staněk. "A lot of tourists are very surprised when they come to our shop and see the Cubist-applied arts and architecture," he says.

Distinct aspects of the style include a strict emphasis on geometric shapes, particularly pyramids and cubes. The idea was to give the structures a dynamic, expressive plasticity. Cubist-style buildings often have a striking sculptural aesthetic.