Ten centuries of European architecture & heritage
Originally a single-storey construction, this magnificent three-winged palace was built between 1703 and 1706 by the architect Giovanni Battista Aliprandi for Count Karel Přehořovský of Kvasejovice, Master of the Royal Mint. In 1753, it was...
In 1999, a statue of the British statesman and wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill was unveiled by Margaret Thatcher in the square in Prague that has borne his name since the Velvet Revolution. Hunched and...
The exponential growth of Prague in the second half of the nineteenth century placed particular pressure on the city’s fresh water supply. Ancient water towers and drinking fountains were no longer good enough, and in...
Prince Václav I – known to the English-speaking world as ‘Good King Wenceslas’ – was one of Bohemia’s first Christian rulers. On 28 September in the year 929 (some say 935) he was murdered by...
Nicholas Winton’s humanitarian work in saving hundreds of Jewish children from the grim certainty of the Holocaust came to light only in 1988. But in the years since, thanks to the efforts of the Slovak...
This full-height bronze of the illustrious poet Karel Hynek Mácha was begun in 1910 (the centenary of his birth) and placed on Petřin Hill, not far from the writer’s birthplace on Újezd street, two years...
Vítkov Hill, due east of Prague’s historic centre, has always been an important strategic site. It was here in 1420 that Jan Žižka, scourge of the Holy Roman Empire and zealous warrior of the Hussite...
In 1722, the celebrated Prague architect Kilián Ignác Dientzenhofer purchased a plot of land formerly held by the Jesuits, where his patron Count Jan Václav Michna already owned a substantial garden. Over the course of...
In 1791 a vast outdoor exhibition took place in Prague to mark the coronation (as King of Bohemia) of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. The celebrations included the first performance of Mozart’s penultimate opera,...
The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918 saw the emergence of a number of independent European nation-states, of which Czechoslovakia was one. Instrumental in the creation of the new republic was the then president...
