Posts

On April 21st, it was announced to the world that Pope Francis had passed away in the Vatican, at the age of 88. Many Czechs have been affected by his death, and political and religious leaders in Czechia have expressed condolences and shared...

In memory of victims of excessive speed on Czechia’s roads, the iconic astronomical clock on Prague’s Old Town Square stopped for thirteen minutes on Wednesday morning. Events and meetings across the country are also taking part in the...

Simona Monyová was a successful Czech novelist who authored around thirty hugely popular fiction books for women focusing on interpersonal relationships and domestic violence. It was only after her husband stabbed her to death in 2011 that her...

The town of Hrušovany near Brno plans to renovate a unique villa designed by the pioneering modernist architect Adolf Loos. The municipality bought the dilapidated building five years ago, aiming to turn it into a cultural centre. It has now...

The destruction of monuments during armed conflicts in various countries prompted the National Heritage Institute to take preventive action in the case of Český Krumlov. The Institute has asked UNESCO to register the castle among the cultural...

In the village of Lukavec in the Nový Jičín area, fifteen horse riders set out on the traditional Easter Monday ride around newly planted fields. According to an old custom, they asked for blessings for their fields and families. See more here.

Can the social sciences shape international policy? Dagmar Vorlíček believes they must. From researching military institutions in Czechia to studying ethics in health data, her work bridges disciplines and reminds us that taking the human...

Helena Lukas, daughter of the major Czech photographer Jan Lukas, escaped to the West with her family in the mid-1960s. In New York the Lukases were part of a Czech cultural elite in exile that included such names as Jiří Voskovec, Ferdinand...

Prague’s metro system is, for many people, one of the jewels of the city, and it has fans all over the world. Its three lines (the green A line, the yellow B line and the red C line) are iconic, and they give the impression of being fixed...

Over the weekend, one of the largest Model UN (MUN) conferences in the Czech Republic was held in Brno. The event saw approximately 200 participants this year, doubling in size consecutively from previous years. Typically, similar events are...

The popular cruise ship Arnošt of Pardubice is once again taking passengers along the Elbe River after a three-year renovation. The overhaul cost eighteen million crowns. Last weekend, the eye-catching white and red boat Arnošt of Pardubice...

Prague’s famous St. Vitus Cathedral, symbol of Czech statehood and home to the Czech crown jewels, is getting a new organ that will better resound through the monumental house of prayer. The instrument, which is being financed from a public...

To mark the opening of the Czech Pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Prague has launched a dedicated Japanese-language website aimed at promoting the Czech capital to Japanese travelers. “In 2024, over 53,000 Japanese tourists came to Prague, which...

Prague is an expanding city. By 2050, projections expect that up to 2 million people could live in Czechia’s capital. To make this transition easier for its residents, the city is investing heavily in its public infrastructure. The latest...

Czech scientists have developed a network of monitoring stations across the country’s forests, allowing researchers, state officials, and foresters to track the health of trees in real time. Their next goal is to expand the system to cover all...

In May 1945, Western Bohemia was liberated by US forces under the command of General Patton. Few veterans who took part in the liberation effort are still alive to tell the story. Czech historian Jiří Klůc was able to locate a number of them in...

BBC Music Magazine announced its annual awards at a gala evening on Wednesday, with the winners chosen by public vote. The Czech Philharmonic took home the Orchestral Award for its recording of Má vlast (My Country) by Bedřich Smetana...

Unlike most episodes of Prague Off the Beaten Track, this one doesn’t take you to just one place. Instead, it takes a step back to look at the bigger picture—because before we head out to places like Libeň, Karlín, or Jižní Město, it helps to...

What makes you unique? Scientist Hana Marvanová studies parent-of-origin effects—how the genes we inherit from our mother and father don’t always express equally. As a PhD student at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna, she co...

World War II was longer for the Czechs than for most European nations. The Czech lands were occupied by Nazi Germany from as early as March 15, 1939, and the first Czech town was liberated from the Nazis on April 12, 1945, less than a month...

This week’s Sunday Music Show is a celebration of a colourful life cut short by illness. After a long battle with cancer, singer Anna Julie Slováčková passed away on April 6th, at the young age of 29. The singer became famous, above all...

In 1895, a significant chapter in the Czech brewing industry began. This distinctly Czech company was established in response to the Czech-German rivalry in Budějovice and the dominance of the German Měšt’anský Pivovar. Czech national...

Once the industrial powerhouse of Czechoslovakia, Ostrava is reinventing itself. In the latest episode of Czechast, geographer Jan Hradecký from Ostrava University shares how the city is embracing its industrial heritage while reconnecting with...

To mark the opening of the Czech Pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Prague has launched a dedicated Japanese-language website aimed at promoting the Czech capital to Japanese travelers. “In 2024, over 53,000 Japanese tourists came to Prague, which...

National park directors are sounding the alarm over amendments to the National Parks Act proposed by MPs. According to them, the amendments would set nature protection back 30 years. The Ministry of the Environment also disagrees with some of...

Prague plans to disallow the parking of shared electric scooters under its upcoming shared transport system. Residents of the city center have long complained about their use, particularly by tourists, leading to the move to drastically limit...

Dominik Luks is a top resilience and strength coach who trains MMA fighters and works with Czechia’s top athletes. His desire to overcome limits has led him to break three world records in just over a year. You could say that Dominik Luks has...

Perhaps the only time Czech rock bands have made a significant splash internationally was in the early 1990s, when groups like the Ecstasy of St. Theresa were covered in the UK music press. EOST, who made the independent charts in England, were...

Legend has it that eggs were needed for the construction of Charles Bridge. But the people of Velvary brought boiled eggs and became a lasting target of ridicule. The legend of Charles Bridge, the iconic Prague structure, tells us that eggs...

In Abu Dhabi, a team of Czech scientists came third at the world’s first racing competition for autonomous drones – drones that fly without direct human control, but rather through on-board programming and AI. Drones are a common sight these...

Sloka may seem like a humble Czech word, referring to the verse of a song or a stanza of poem, but it has a very distinct origin. It’s also a testament to how individuals can have a big impact on a language, if the conditions are right. Josef...

Prague Beer Fest is returning for another year, running from midday on Friday 11th of April to midnight on Saturday 12th. Danny Bate spoke to Miroslav Brada from the team behind the festival, to find out what’s new this year and how the...

Jeffrey Martin, a pioneer in the field of 360-degree photography, has been living in Prague for a quarter of a century. Recently his company Mosaic launched a 15-terapixel open-source data set of high resolution street view imagery of the city...

This year marks the 31st Commemoration of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. The commemoration period, known as Kwibuka (Kinyarwanda for “Remembrance”), serves as a time for Rwandans and the global community to come...

H.E. Mr. Metin Feyzioğlu, Ambassador of the Republic of Türkiye to the Czech Republic, and Mrs. Birgül Feyzioğlu hosted, at their beautiful residence a lecture “Istanbul-three Cities, Three Stories” by Lukáš Kubín to discover the ancient world...

The Czech National Pavilion welcomed an exceptionally rare visitor. The Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba visited the Czech Pavilion as the first international pavilion at EXPO 2025. Over the weekend, the World Expo exhibition grounds on...

On Saturday, April 12, it will be one year since Gaia was born. The name of only the second lowland gorilla cub in the Dja Reservation pavilion was chosen and given last year by world-renowned primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall...

Fifty years have passed since Václav Havel wrote his open letter to Gustáv Husák, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, titled “Dear Dr. Husák.” But is the document merely a relic of the past, or...

The Eggenberg golden carriage, one of the Czech Republic’s rarest historical artefacts, will leave Český Krumlov castle after more than 350 years. It is being loaned to Eggenberg Castle in Graz, Austria where it will be one of the...

This year’s season at the state castles, chateaus, and other monuments managed by the National Heritage Institute (NPS) will begin on Saturday, April 5. Visitors can look forward to new guided tours, and, starting in mid-April, Easter...

Would you live on a houseboat floating on the Vltava River in Czechia’s capital? Our team visited a couple who are lucky enough to do just that. Join us as we discover this unique experience that Prague has to offer. The interior of the home is...

Pablo Picasso, one of the most iconic artists of the 20th century, is drawing visitors to Český Krumlov. A new exhibition at the Monastery Gallery offers a rare look not only at his artworks but also at the life of the man himself. Český...

Teachers at a Prague primary school are changing how the Czech language is taught to foreign children, and have produced new textbooks that implement their method. In today’s interconnected and multicultural world, Czech primary schools cannot...

Allied pilots targeted strategic locations in Czech cities during the Second World War. How do veterans recall these missions? What significance did they hold for them, and how do they view them now? I explore this and more in our next episode...

As EXPO 2025 in Osaka opens this coming Sunday, the acclaimed Prague-based contemporary circus company La Putyka is putting the final touches on a unique production for the Czech National Day. Blending tradition, modern performance, and...

Over 20 organizations, including the Czech office of the World Health Organization and the Czech Medical Chamber, are urging politicians to implement stricter alcohol controls in Czechia. The country has one of the highest alcohol consumption...

What happens when an elite ruling class suddenly loses its power? Historian Luděk Němec explores the topic of the dramatic transformation of the Czech aristocracy in the 20th century in in Vienna in this episode of Science Without Borders. In a...

Ten years ago, Kateřina Snopková from Masaryk University’s Faculty of Medicine brought back samples from Antarctica. Now she has announced that they contained a new bacterial species. Despite the geographical distance, Masaryk University in...

Various folklore associations across Czechia took part in the traditional ritual of carrying away the Morana on Sunday. In Telč, a two-meter-high figurine, representing the death goddess, was cast into the pond by a vibrant costumed procession...

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world’s largest laboratory for particle physics. It’s a unique place where scientists from around the globe work together to explore the fundamental mysteries of the universe. In an...

Monkey Business is a Czech funk and pop band that was formed in Prague in 1999. It is one of the musical projects of multi-instrumentalist and producer Roman Holý. As of 2025, they have released a total of eleven studio albums. For this...

On April 6, 2015, Prague’s metro system took a significant step forward with the opening of four new stations on the A line: Bořislavka, Nádraží Veleslavín, Petřiny, and Nemocnice Motol. This extension greatly improved accessibility to the...

Born in France, Constantin Kinský studied there, and made a successful career in international finance. But when communism fell in Central and Eastern Europe, Constantin Kinský came back. With his late father, he returned to the family’s...

Reza Bird, an Iranian-American filmmaker and founder of Nxt Animal Project premiered his documentary Revolution 3.0 at the One World Festival in Prague. The documentary is autobiographical and shows us his journey of exile as an artist in Iran...

The first-ever driverless train in Czechia started operating on the Kopidlno to Dolní Bousov line in the Mladá Boleslav region on Friday. This marks a historic milestone as Europe’s first autonomous train to carry passengers, with the first...

The Prague Zoo has recently welcomed Salvadorian monitor lizards. A young couple named Salva and Dorian have taken up residence in the Large Turtle Pavilion, which until recently was inhabited by adolescent Komodo dragons. After 17 years, the...

UN Tourism and the Ministry of the Economy and Innovation of Lithuania have agreed on a shared vision for tourism development in the country for the period 2025–2027. In addition to accelerating digital transformation, innovation, and...

On 28th March 2025, a devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar, with its epicenter near Mandalay, the second-largest city.

Czech authorities declared a state of emergency near Hustopeče nad Bečvou on February 28 following a train crash that led to the spread of 1,000 tons of toxic benzene. Olomouc Governor Ladislav Okleštěk stated that the declaration was necessary...

As the ice on the Lipno Reservoir in South Bohemia has gradually melted over the past few weeks, satellite images have revealed an unexpected sight. The original meander of the Vltava River, known as the “Heart of the Vltava,” has...

In February and March 1945, the Americans fought a bloody battle for the small Pacific island of Iwo Jima. The island of less than thirty square miles, was strategically located, a crucial “stepping stone” on the way to mainland...

Soaring high above Prague’s rooftops, the Žižkov Television Tower is impossible to miss—and just as impossible to categorize. A product of late-communist engineering, this peculiar structure has been called everything from an eyesore to a...

Czechia, within the framework of the EU’s Ukraine Facility instrument, is investing 100 million euros (2. See more here. Author: Danny Bate

Národní is a Czech adjective that translates to ‘national’. Just like in English, underlying the adjective národní is the Czech word for ‘nation’, národ. English gets the words nation and national from Latin. See more here.

Every year, on May 1st — the Czech equivalent of Valentine’s Day — couples flock to Prague’s Petřín Hill to kiss beneath the statue of Czech romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha, author of the iconic epic poem Máj. However, after more than a...

Legiovlak created by the Czechoslovak Legionary Community, is a faithful replica of a legionary train from WWI, when the Czechoslovak Legions were engaged in war operations on the Trans-Siberian Railway in Russia. Over the past ten years, it...

Unmanned aerial systems have become central to today’s battlefields, far beyond what many European armies expected. General Roman Hyťha, Director of the Armed Forces Intelligence Division at the General Staff, says the Czech military must...

In the next episode of our series Science Without Borders, we go to Vienna to talk to Zlata Tabachová on how she uses mathematics and physics to rethink how the fundamental building blocks of society function. Imagine a world where data helps...

As part of our series on women in typically male-dominated professions, we spoke to Gabriela Jílková, one of Czechia’s best racing drivers and currently a development driver for Porsche’s Formula E team. She follows in the footsteps of Eliška...

The name ‘Casanova’ will most likely conjure up an image of an Italian adventurer, having numerous affairs with many women and getting into trouble with the law, not an image of a librarian in northern Bohemia. Yet this is in fact how the...

What does it feel like to float in zero gravity? Thanks to a unique Czech project, 26 students got to find out—on board a specially modified Airbus A310 that performed a series of parabolic maneuvers over Central Europe. The flight, led by...

The animals competed in several disciplines, trained and accompanied by their owners. Rabbit jumping originated in Sweden thirty years ago and has gradually gained great popularity. Czechia is currently one of Europe’s superpowers in this sport...

Director Martin Dušek’s latest documentary looks at the issue of taste, primarily when it comes to how Czechs handle home construction/renovation and the urban landscape. A DIY approach is deeply ingrained and many refuse to hire architects...

The next stage of the reconstruction of the town’s House of Culture is taking place in Ostrov near Karlovy Vary. A group of North Bohemian restorers is dismantling unique glass chandeliers from the period of socialist realism. The...

There was a time when telegrams were the pinnacle of modern communication. Their era definitively ended on March 31, 2010, when the very last telegram was sent on the territory of the Czech Republic. This historical artefact is now exhibited in...

In 2024, Czech veterinarians issued passports for around 72,000 dogs, cats, and ferrets, maintaining a steady level compared to 2023. See more here. Author: Ruth Fraňková

Czechast with Jaromír Marek, journalist and author who produced a TV documentary and a whole book about a story that takes us far from Central Europe—deep into the heart of Soviet Central Asia, to what is today Kyrgyzstan. At the end of March...

To get to know the country’s past, while also enjoying a nice day out in pretty surroundings, visiting a Czech castle is a good way to spend time in Czechia – whether you’re here for the first time, or are a long-term resident in search of new...

Forget chalkboards and textbooks. In the heart of the Czech Republic, a glowing globe powered by satellite data is transforming science education—one orbit at a time. Using a high-tech globe and real-time data from space, a group of educators...

On the occasion of the Tunisian National Day, H.E Mrs. Yorsa Souiden, Ambassador of the Republic of Tunisia in the Czech Republic, hosted an Iftar reception, with special tradition Tunisian food at her beautiful Residence in Prague. The...

On the occasion of the National Day of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, H.E. Ms. Ayesha Ali – The Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and her spousehost a reception at the beautiful Kaiserstejnsky Palac in Prague. Mr. Jan Marian –...

The collection inspired by Japanese workwear includes a complete set of clothing for the entire staff of the Czech pavilion at EXPO 2025 in Osaka. In these outfits, it will be possible to meet hostesses, restaurant staff, and other staff...

Czech President Petr Pavel is convinced that Czech troops should be part of the peacekeeping force in Ukraine after a peace agreement is reached. He said this during an interview with European Pravda, which was published on Saturday. The...

Czech President Petr Pavel recently visited Ukraine. While there, he said that Czechia is ready to provide troops to Ukraine in case that a full ceasefire is agreed upon between Russia and Ukraine. The president also said that it’s likely that...

ADONXS, a young Slovak musician living in Prague, will represent the Czech Republic at the 69th Eurovision Song Contest. His entry ‘Kiss Kiss Goodbye’ is about “how love drives and shapes us—but so does its absence,”...

The historic “U Hybernů” building near Prague’s Powder Tower has been sold in an electronic auction for 447 million Czech crowns. According to the Office for Government Representation in Property Affairs (ÚZSVM), which organized the sale, it...

Thousands of people attended the annual Almond and Wine Festival in the largest almond orchard in Central Europe near the town of Hustopeče at the weekend. Visitors could sample unusual dishes such as almond sausages, almond ice cream or almond...

The Czech film Waves (“Vlny”), about the events of the Prague Spring, the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, and the broadcasting of Czechoslovak Radio in 1967 and 1968, was released in French cinemas. Unlike the version shown in Czechia, the...

An in-depth report on the impacts of the ongoing war in Ukraine on the mental health of soldiers and civilians has been published by three Czech researchers. One of the team, the journalist, photographer and researcher Jiří Pasz, spoke to Danny...

Slovakia this week confirmed foot-and-mouth disease at a fourth farm in the southern parts of the country. The highly contagious disease, for which there is no cure, spread there from Hungary where it appeared several weeks ago. Strict...

Can a woman be ordained a priest? In the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, this has been a reality since 1953. Since then, more than 200 women have been ordained in the largest Protestant church in Bohemia. Today, women pastors make up...

The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs has launched the very first Diplomacy Week. It is a nationwide initiative designed to give students and the public a closer look at the work of Czech and international diplomats. The event is part of a...

From early explorers to Cold War émigrés, Czechs have made a lasting impact on American society. Understanding the role of Czech communities abroad is an essential part of how the country represents itself to the world. Dr. See more here...

A special cloak that can make soldiers invisible to enemy drones has been hailed as a “game changer”. Invented and manufactured by Czech experts, the cloak continues to be used by special units of the Ukrainian army. 4M Systems is a...

The number of people complaining about botched procedures in plastic surgery conducted by underqualified or fake doctors is increasing. Experts are ringing alarm bells and the Ministry of Health has proposed a draft law that would tighten the...

As a part of the ongoing One World documentary festival that took place in Prague last week and is scheduled to run in Czech cities until April 27th, I had the opportunity to interview Victoria Mapplebeck, an award-winning director and artist...

In Vienna, Jakub Dokulil is developing a cutting-edge microscope that tracks molecular movement in real time. For him, science is both an adventure and a team effort. He is a master’s student at the University of Vienna and a researcher at the...