.
The Jan Palach Square street sign

Streets – Jan Palach Square

Jan Palach Square – Namesti Jana Palacha If ever there was a place in the city that highlights why names of locations change over the years it’s the current Jan Palach Square. The names used here include it’s location, its function, a prince, an empress, two composers, a communist name and a memorial. It’s a … Read More

Prague castle obelisk in the third courtyard of the castle with the old deanery and st vitus cathedral

Prague Castle Obelisk

Memorials – The Prague Castle Obelisk Consider that the original idea for a simple memorial plaque to Czechs and Slovaks killed in World War One would end up with hundreds of tons of granite being mined, the military involved in transporting different versions and the final version installed in a different place than originally intended. … Read More

ovocny trh prague fruit market with one side in shade and cobbled road

Prague Streets – Ovocny Trh

Prague Streets – Ovocný Trh (the Fruit Market) Trh is an easy word to recognise in Czech as it means “market”. So the word in front of it should give the game away i.e. ovocný means “fruit”. So Ovocný Trh means Fruit Market but historically this area of the Old Town was much more than … Read More

main prague uprising memorial on the old town hall

WW2 Prague Uprising

The WW2 Prague Uprising A frequent question on my walking tours is whether the centre of Prague was bombed during World War Two because it looks so old. I answer this question more fully on my World War Two Walking Tour but in summary, yes it was bombed but no the majority of any damage … Read More

Memorial to the Victims of Collectivisation in Czechoslovakia consisting of metal shards in the form of a cereal crop encased in barbed wire

Victims of Collectivisation

Memorial to the Victims of Collectivisation When you take individual private companies and bring them under State control that’s called Nationalisation. When you take an entire sector of production under State control that’s called Collectivisation. In post-1948 Czechoslovakia the theory for agriculture was that as the State now owned the company or the land it … Read More

czech 19 korun postage stamp with the graphic image of film director milos forman

Milos Forman

Famous Czechs – Miloš Forman Ask the average person what film directors they have heard of and it will be a pretty short list including Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg I imagine. Now ask your average Czech person and they’ll probably reel off a dozen names off the top of their head without even thinking. … Read More

a prague world war two memorial plaque to josef skalda including portrait and wreath

WW2 Memorials – Josef Skalda

WW2 Memorials – Josef Skalda There are thousands of memorials in the city and a large number relate to events and characters of World War Two. As I was passing this particular memorial I happened to notice that there was a lot of detail with a word that I had never seen before – SŤAT. … Read More

bronze memorial to czech ice hockey players with central character bohumil modry

Memorial to Eleven Ice Hockey Players

Memorial to Eleven Ice Hockey Players Surely one of the strangest memorials to the communist era is at Pšstrossova 24 in the New Town. It states that eleven ice hockey players were arrested in March 1950 and sent to prison. In fact several of these guys were either Olympic silver medallists in 1948 and/or ice … Read More

a representation of jan zajic on a czech national flag

Famous Czechs – Jan Zajic

Famous Czechs – Jan Zajic To set the scene you have to understand that the August 1968 invasion of Prague by Warsaw Pact countries extinguished the Prague Spring freedoms. Any political or social reforms were cancelled and Czechoslovakia regressed to its 1950’s state. As was increasingly common in the late 1960s, the method of the … Read More

Karel Hašler playing a guitar statue on the Prague Old Castle Steps

Karel Hašler

Famous Czechs – Karel Hašler Every year thousands of people are walking up or down the Old Castle Steps at the back of Prague Castle and at the top of the steps they walk past (and briefly look at) a sculpture of a man with his legs crossed, leaning against the wall and playing a … Read More