Posts

Ludwig Löwi Moser supplied the courts of emperors and monarchs such as Franz Joseph I, the Persian Shah and the British King Edward VII with his elegant creations. The founder of the global brand Moser was not only a skilled craftsman, but also...

Špejchar 1969–1991 I–II is the title of a compilation by the great Czech singer and guitar player Vladimír Mišík. The double album, which has now been rereleased by the label Supraphon, contains many of the popular artist’s best-loved songs...

The organisers of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival have just revealed that actress Robin Wright will appear this year. She joins other star names, including Russell Crowe, whose band will perform for the public on the opening night...

On Wednesday the sixth edition of the Metronome festival will kick off in Prague, ushering in four days of international musical programming and cultural events. I spoke with David Gaydečka, the founder of the festival, about the development of...

Although perhaps not as well-known as the nearby Lucerna, the Koruna Palace is an architectural masterpiece. With its unique blend of function and style, the palace has been an important Prague feature for over a century. The Koruna, or...

In the latest in a series of moves by the city to rid itself of reminders of its decades of Soviet occupation and oppression, Prague City Hall voted on Monday to rename Koněvova Street, which is called after the controversial Soviet military...

Czechoslovakia decriminalised homosexuality in 1961, earlier than many Western European countries. Why was it that the generally repressive Communist regime showed such tolerance? And what was like life for gay people under communism? The...

Father’s Day is this Sunday, but are Czech dads actively involved in the day to day domestic duties of running a family amongst heterosexual couples, or are mothers still bearing the brunt of the workload? I asked Dr. Jana Klímová Chaloupková...

On Tuesday evening at the Platforma 15 gallery in Prague, Czech artist Renata Machýčková will debut her first show in 10 years in her native country. The exhibition titled “Blades on Heels” showcases her paintings as well as paper carvings that...

Dinner in the Sky is a food concept taking place across the world highlighting the best chefs and faces in contemporary gastronomy. Since 2017 the event has also been held in Prague, presenting Czech chefs who serve guests – at an altitude of...

František Bělský is largely unknown in his native country. However, the Czech, who was born in 1921, achieved great success in his adopted UK, becoming the only sculptor ever to create busts of four generations of the royal family. Bělský’s...

In Darwin Crater we have recently introduced Winkleigh, the wombat female, to the public. Now we are expecting the arrival of the breeding group of Tasmanian devils. And between these two major events, one more has been squeezed in: We now have...

Lenka Lichtenberg is a Prague-born singer and composer living in Toronto. She has recently won the Juno Award, Canada’s highest music prize, for Thieves of Dreams, an album based on poetry written by her grandmother in Terezín during the...

In the 1950s, during the darkest phase of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Czech sexologists started to research the female orgasm, outpacing most of their colleagues abroad. What triggered their interest in the topic and what exactly...

Two pilgrims from the United States and Canada have just covered over 700 kilometres across Moravia on foot. They were tracing the footsteps of their distant ancestors from the Hutterite community, who were driven out of Europe in the 18th...

The Open Gardens festival will be taking place across Prague this weekend, with different gardens scheduling unique programming. The festival is the perfect opportunity to learn about the unique art and architecture featured in gardens...

Jakub Cigler is perhaps THE architect of post-1989 Prague. His Jakub Cigler Architekti are behind the ongoing remodeling of Wenceslas Square and have also designed such buildings as Quadrio, Florentinum and The Park in Chodov.

Hundreds of villages in the European military theatre of World War II became the target of Nazi massacres, where entire populations of inhabitants were systematically murdered and the villages razed to the ground. But perhaps none became more...

The Czech Hiking Club was born 135 years ago in June 1888, established by a group of travel enthusiasts. Its chairman, Vojtěch Náprstek, came up with a unique hiking trail network that serves tourists and hikers to this day.

Lenka Lichtenberg is a Prague-born world-music artist based in Canada. Her most recent album, Thieves of Dreams: Songs of Theresienstadt’s Secret Poetess is based on poetry that her grandmother wrote in the Terezín concentration camp during the...

A pair of white storks from Czechia have recently made international headlines. The unusual couple, consisting of two females, have been nesting on a chimney in south Bohemia, taking turns in caring for their two chicks. According to...

The annual microbrewery festival took place this past weekend in the Prague Castle gardens, highlighting 50 of the best microbreweries from every end of Czechia. Each year, the festival draws in thousands of beer lovers, local and tourists...

The Czech foreign minister, Jan Lipavský, has just kicked off a working trip to Angola and Zambia. Czech foreign policy is increasingly focused on Africa and Mr. Lipavský says Europe needs to “bring a better offer” if it is to weaken Russian...

Hundreds of people gathered at Prague Castle on Monday evening to break bread with their neighbours. Long tables were arranged in the shape of a heart around St. Vitus Cathedral for people to sit and share a communal feast together.

On June 13 and 14, 2003, Czechs voted overwhelmingly (77 percent) to enter the EU. We discuss that historic vote, and current attitudes to the union, with Martin Dvořák, Czech minister for European Affairs.

Researchers have announced a gruesome find at Prague’s Pankrác jail: the cremated remains of 80-plus communist-era political prisoners. The dead included executed opponents of the regime, though much remains unclear about the victims’...

The Platýz Palace is a grand building located on Prague’s Národní třída, not far from Jungmannovo náměstí. During its long history the palace served as a noble residence and an inn, before later becoming one of Prague’s first apartment...

A march set for Prague on Thursday aims to show solidarity with victims of sexual and domestic violence in Czechia. The organisers are also demanding change – specifically for the Czech government to ratify the Istanbul Convention.

Czech-born all-time tennis great Martina Navrátilová has just received an award in Prague, the silver medal of the president of the Senate. The 66-year-old said she was happy to be back – and glad that today’s young sports people don’t have to...

At the launch event of the new 'Eurocities Lille Call to Action for low carbon and more inclusive culture', 24 cities already signed the document and many more have pledged to. This new initiative, led by the city of Lille and Eurocities...

The Mayor of Leipzig, Burkhard Jung, will represent major European cities in the coming two years, as President of Eurocities. He succeeds the Mayor of Florence, Dario Nordella, and is joined by the Mayor of Ghent, Mathias De Clercq, who will...

The 11th annual KoresponDance international festival of contemporary dance, movement theater and the new circus will show that dance and circus art are close to architecture.

At a press conference at Prague Castle, the President of the Republic, Petr Pavel, summarized the first 100 days since the inauguration.

Prague Zoo is celebrating an extraordinary breeding success. Curator Peter Velenský's team was able to breed extremely delicate terrapins.

Ninety years ago, a new bear exhibit was ceremonially opened in Prague Zoo, a stone’s throw from the main entrance.

After the wild pairing, the atmosphere in the common wombat exhibit is noticeably calmer. Biting, gnashing of teeth, and loud yelling have been replaced by regular meetings and obvious interest in each other. Visitors can get to know the first...

Several dozen people gathered in Prague’s Stromovka Park at sunrise on Friday morning to take part in the annual scythe mowing event, during which they cut down a wild flower meadow to the sound of folk music. The traditional scythe mowing...

Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, the largest festival of its kind in the world, gets underway in Prague on Thursday. Located in various venues around the capital, it will explore scenography in its broadest sense, from scenic...

The President of the Republic, Petr Pavel, was on a working visit to Slovakia on June 6 and 7. He attended the meeting of B9 presidents in Bratislava and visited the soldiers of the Czech contingent at the training center in Lešt.

At CAMP, the Centre for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning in downtown Prague, a new exhibit presents a mosaic of everyday life in the city through the eyes of Dutch photographer Iwaan Baan. The exhibit features thousands of images of...

Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Markéta Pekarová Adamová held talks on 7.6.2023 with her Korean counterpart Kim Jin-pyo in Prague. The main topics were Czech-Korean cooperation in the political and economic fields. The President, who visited...

June 6, 2023 – Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Markéta Pekarová Adamová, Speaker of the Austrian National Council Wolfgang Sobotka and Speaker of the Slovak National Council Boris Kollár jointly made a two-day working trip to Georgia. In the...

More than 1,800 churches, temples and religious sites will open their doors to the public within the 15th annual Night of Open Churches on Friday, June 2. The event includes concerts, exhibitions, and access to houses of prayer otherwise closed...

Immersion, translated into Czech as ‘do hloubky’, is the new and cool-looking graphic novel by Adam Trachtman that details his adventures – linguistic, itinerant, and sexual – as he joins the hordes of young Westerners heading east in the early...

A replica of a Marian column torn down in 1918 was erected on Prague’s Old Town Square three years ago, in June 2020, after years of often turbulent debate. A group called the Society for the Restoration of the Marian Column lobbied for the...

Located just off Wenceslas Square, the Lucerna Palace is an iconic building. Its rooftop terraces and passages are unique even for the historic centre of Prague. Interestingly, the palace was originally planned to be one storey higher and have...

If you ask a Czech for a good summer getaway, it is quite likely they will mention the Lipno reservoir. Built during the 1950s it is not only the largest reservoir in Czechia, but it also borders the beautiful Šumava Natural Park. Despite being...

There were no goods in shops. You weren’t allowed to travel. Rock stars didn’t come to the country to perform. So how else were Czechs supposed to entertain themselves? “Sex was one of the few pleasures that were available back then at the same...

In the wake of the Kakhovka dam flooding, the Czech government and NGOs have joined the humanitarian aid effort. The Czech Defense Ministry is preparing a consignment of tankers for the distribution of drinking water, life vests and water pumps...

To mark the centenary of Czech Radio, the public broadcaster’s jazz station prepared a special project called 100 Years of Jazz/100 Years of Radio. Within the project, contemporary composers were asked to create new arrangements of traditional...

The legendary Czech goalie Dominik Hašek (nicknamed The Dominator) paid a visit to the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Monday to express support for the country, which has been successfully resisting Russian military aggression since...

Czechia has a rich history of cinema and that heritage is carefully administered by the National Film Archive in Prague, which is currently celebrating 80 years of existence. I discussed the archive’s establishment during the Nazi occupation...

On the outskirts of the city centre in Prague 3, a delicious Italian bakery serves up traditional Tuscan and Italian fare, and has become a social hub for both Italian expats in the neighbourhood and local Czechs. In the heart of downtown...

This Friday, June 9th will be the opening night of the first annual Prague Art and Activism exhibition. A night showcasing the talent of artists whose thought-provoking work crosses boundaries between advocacy and multi-medium beauty. Nicholas...

Best friends Phillip Schniedermeier and Jeff Couloute who together make up the duo behind the American restaurant Philly & Co’s in lower Žižkov have turned their passion for cooking up American and their native Chicago style food into a hub...

The Toy Museum Prague offers a fascinating collection of toys spanning three centuries. The Golden Age of Toys was put together and is curated by Ivan Steiger, a prominent Czech filmmaker, illustrator and cartoonist, who has lived and worked in...

Susan Loy is an American artist who had a successful business selling her paintings in the US, but left it all behind a few years ago to move to Prague, when she was already in her 70s. Like Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk, the American wife of...

Brno, Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, and Calgary – these are some of the cities where an ingenious invention by two Moravian dog owners has spread. Their patented dog urinal prevents unsightly stains and nasty odours from sullying public spaces. Ten...

Cigarettes are getting increasingly more expensive in Czechia, but recent data suggests that as much as a quarter of people over the age of 15 are smokers. On the occasion of World No Tobacco Day, we spoke to Dr Eva Králíková, who heads a stop...

The country’s largest Protestant denomination, the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren, announced over the weekend that it will officially allow pastors to bless same-sex unions. I spoke to Filip Milde of the organisation Jsme Fér, which...

The President of the Republic Petr Pavel and Eva Pavlova started their visit to Austria in the early evening of May 31 with a meeting with their compatriots. They met the students of the Comenius School, listened to the school’s...

This weekend the Moravian village of Vlčnov celebrated its most cherished festival of the year: the traditional “Ride of the Kings” which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The traditional Ride of Kings is by no means a quiet event. The...

The President of the Republic, Petr Pavel, appointed new constitutional judges on Monday, June 5 2023.

President of the Senate Miloš Vystrčil, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Markéta Pekarová Adamová, Prime Minister Petr Fiala, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Lipavský met today at Prague Castle with President Petr Pavel. The reason for...

The 2023 edition of the multi-genre Prague Sounds music festival will feature the likes of Benjamin Clementine, Alva Noto & Ensemble Modern and jazz great Ron Carter. Though the event is not until November, the organisers unveiled the line...

This week the Prague authorities approved studies to revitalise the through-road cutting across the centre of the city. The plans – which still need permits – would make the unpopular “magistrála” more attractive for pedestrians and cyclists...

One of the most popular lookout spots on the River Vltava is in the hills of the Central Bohemian Upland, about an hour’s drive south of Prague. In the southwestern part of the Drbákov-Albertovy skály nature reserve there are up to 1,000 red...

One of Prague’s iconic Brutalist structures, the Central Telecommunications Building in the district of Žižkov, is gradually being demolished. However, some valuable art pieces from its interior have been saved, including a large-scale mosaic...

70 years ago, on June 1, 1953, the ruling Communist regime announced a major monetary reform which significantly cut the value of the money in circulation. Many people lost most of their savings and became virtually penniless. 1953 was not a...

Czech-born mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená (born on May 26, 1973) is one of the bright lights of world opera. Although based in Britain, she returns regularly to Czechia to perform and was one of the biggest attractions of this year’s Prague...

The organisers of the Karlovy Vary film festival have just unveiled its two competitions, a month before the 57th edition starts. The main Crystal Globe competition will have one fewer entry than usual, after the Chinese authorities intervened...

A largescale project is currently in the works that seeks to present the history and current forms of Czech graphic design to both the domestic and international audience. Bohemian Identity, as it is called, will trace the story of how various...

The tragic earthquake that recently hit Turkey and Syria served as another reminder of the catastrophic damage earthquakes can cause, especially in countries that can’t afford expensive early warning systems. But a new cheap sensor that is...

The Covid pandemic placed a lot of restrictions on the society and resulted in a large number of court cases in which people sought compensation. A father who was banned from seeing his child born has now won an important battle over his rights...

An exhibition presenting an overview of independent Polish art of the 1980s got underway in Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region this week. Called Uncensored, it presents the Polish equivalent of the post-1968 Czech underground art scene. I...

I had to get up very early in the morning, but I did not regret. The scope owl was very near the place, for which I got the tip. In the morning gloom, before the sunrise, it could be barely seen in the opening of the tree cavity – but it was...

The statues of three of the apostles gracing Prague’s famous Old Town Clock, which were damaged by vandals last June, are being dismantled and taken away for restoration. The clock dating back to 1410, which is admired by millions of tourists...

If you regularly take the Prague tram between Čechův Most and Nábřeží Kapitána Jaroše, you may have noticed the giant pieces of artwork on display in the niches of the wall that runs parallel to the Vltava river below Letná. Until June 6, those...

23/05/2023 On 23.5.2023 President Petr Pavel met for the first time with a group of his foreign policy advisers. Its members are Petr Kolář, Karel Schwarzenberg, Michael Žantovský, Jiří Pehe, Tomáš Petříček and Jan Macháček. The group is...

For the group of gorillas in the Dja Reserve, the outdoor enclosure has reopened after the winter break. The Kisumu male and the daughter of the famous Prague gorilla Moji Duni, whose pregnancy was confirmed last week, took a look at the...

Earlier this week, Czechia and the United States signed a Defence Cooperation Agreement in Washington. The treaty creates a legal framework for the possible deployment of US soldiers on Czech territory, though officials on both sides insist it...

Machine translation experts from Charles University have developed a new system that can translate between 43 languages in real time. Intended for international conferences, Elitr shows words said by a speaker on a screen within milliseconds...

The next stop on our Vltava tour takes us to a valley near the small village of Teletín, offering some of the most beautiful views you can find of the Vltava River. At first glance, Teletín, with a population of less than 100 people and few...

The NW Präsident set off with a crew on a 328-kilometre-long journey to Vienna on 21 May 1898. They arrived a day later. The car’s average speed was 22.62 km/h. The history of the Tatra car company goes back to 1850, when Ignaz Schustala, with...

Czechia possesses several leading institutions of higher learning that have produced internationally renowned scientists, businesspeople and academics. No wonder then that the number of foreigners studying in the country has been growing. We...

Less than three weeks after the coronation of Charles III, Czechia has received its first visitor from the British royal family, H.R.H. Prince Edward. The prince, who drank a pint with Czechia’s President Petr Pavel on Tuesday, is in Prague to...

Many of Prague’s architectural gems will open to the public for free this weekend within the Open House Prague festival, which is now in its ninth year. Visitors can admire the interiors of more than 100 buildings as well as spaces that are...

When Time Stopped is the title of Ariana Neumann’s first book, about the history of her Jewish family in Prague during the war. Before he emigrated to Venezuela in 1949, her father Hans (or Hanuš) Neumann survived the Holocaust thanks to false...

The Czech government announced on Wednesday that Czechia would abstain from a vote on the EU’s accession to the Istanbul Convention on combatting violence against women. Two of the ruling parties are reluctant to support it and the cabinet is...

In the early 2000s, native Scot Steve Gove decided to resurrect the intimate feel of the original Edinburgh Fringe festival, before it became the gargantuan beast it is today, and bring it to Prague. Now in its 22nd year, the Prague Fringe is...

A new exhibition showcasing the fashion style of Czechoslovak and Czech first ladies is currently on display at the National Museum in Prague. Visitors can see dozens of items from the first ladies’ wardrobes, including a blouse and skirt that...

The Czech government has decided to scrap several Communist-era decrees that allowed Russia to use land in Czechia rent-free for diplomatic purposes. The decision has elicited an angry reaction from Moscow, which is threatening to retaliate...

Two valuable documentary collections from Czechia have been inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World register: the Antonín Dvořák Archive, which contains most of the great Czech composer’s manuscripts and the Moll Map Collection, a set of...

Many thousands of people helped Czech Radio celebrate its centenary this week at a special free concert at the Prague park Riegrovy sady. The line-up for the marathon event included a whole host of popular Czech names, including Aneta...

The east Bohemian city of Pardubice is gearing up for its annual aviation fair this weekend. Highlights this year include air shows by Lukasz Czepiela, who successfully landed a plane on top of a skyscraper in Dubai in March, and Felix...

The foundation stone of Adolf Loos’ last house, which was designed in 1932 but never came to fruition, will be symbolically laid on Tuesday outside the National Technical Museum in Prague. Originally commissioned by the influential Czech...

The Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Markéta Pekarová Adamová, ended her five days working trip to the United States of America in the Georgian capital, Atlanta. Here she met with the influential Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as well...

Until recently, it was thought that the oldest full-length radio play preserved in the Czech Radio archives was from after the Second World War. But that changed thanks to a chance discovery of a Czech adaptation for radio of Jack London’s 1906...

The 78th edition of the Prague Spring music festival gets underway on Friday night at Prague’s Municipal House. The country’s top classical event will traditionally open with Bedřich Smetana’s Má vlast or My Country, this time performed...

One of the last battles to take place in World War Two Europe occurred south-west of Prague around the town of Milín, several days after Germany had officially capitulated. It was unique in that the combat saw units of the Wehrmacht, SS, Soviet...