Ten centuries of European architecture & heritage
This early baroque palace in the Malá Strana district was built between 1662 and 1675 for Jan Hartvik, count of Nostitz (‘Nostic’ in Czech orthography). For many years attributed to Francesco Caratti, later analysis suggests...
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Czech politics was dominated by one question: how to gain greater autonomy from the Austrian empire (or indeed how to break with Austria entirely). The argument was...
Radio broadcasts in Czechoslovakia began on 18 May 1923, making the fledgling state only the second country in Europe after Britain to enjoy such a regular service. For the first two years, programmes were broadcast...
The completion in 1891 of the new museum at the top of Wenceslas Square was the crowning achievement of the Czech National Revival, a statement of nationhood that anticipated by thirty years the founding of...
The village of Chlumec, fifty miles east of Prague, came into the possession of the noble family of Kinský at the start of the seventeenth century. In 1721, Count František Ferdinand Kinský invited the baroque...
Entering the city limits, drivers approaching Prague from the north encounter a dramatic sight. Dominating the high ridge to their left, a brooding neo-baroque chateau suddenly hoves into view like a great three-storey ship sailing...
In the seventeenth century, there grew on the sloping hillside east of Karlovo náměstí (Charles Square) a vineyard where, in 1691, a small wooden chapel was established in memory of John Nepomuk by Kristian Florian...
Rising impressively from a rocky bluff south of the city, the ancient fortified settlement of Vyšehrad dates from the tenth century. The place is indelibly linked with the foundation of Prague, thanks largely to the...
Halfway along the impressive southern rampart of Prague Castle stands the Ludvík wing, a five-storey bastion built between 1503 and 1509 and named after Ludvík Jagellonský, ruler of Bohemia from 1516 to 1526. Its architect,...
These handsome semi-detached villas in Prague’s Střešovice district look just as though they were uprooted from suburban London, the new middle-class landscape for which the poet John Betjeman coined the name ‘Metroland’. So it’s no...
