The biggest difference between Prague and all of Italy that I saw:

bathrooms.

I don't know what exactly the story is here, but one could (with a bit more time and data) write a very long essay about the histories and destinies of various western industrialised nations on the basis of an examination of their public and not-so-public toilets. Let's just say for brevity's sake (because I don't want to spend all afternoon in Starbucks using their wifi) that the Czech Republic now qualifies as a substantially more civilized country than Italy in my book.