Magazine

A Czech jeweller has created a replica of the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, a team of enthusiasts is building a miniaturized model of a town which was razed to the ground to make way for coal mining and, a group of Czechs have held a non-stop reading of the entire Lisbon treaty to prove that it is readable. Find out more in Magazine with Daniela Lazarová.

Photo: CTK

A Czech jeweller has created a replica of the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, which dates back to the late 10th century. The empire’s rulers were all crowned with it – including the king of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV in 1355. The original is preserved in Hofburg Chateau in Vienna, its copy was commissioned by the governor of Central Bohemia and was unveiled this week in the Holy Rood Chapel at Karlštejn Castle, which was built in the 14th century as a shrine for the imperial coronation jewels. The Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire thus made a symbolic return to Karlštejn 600 years after it left the treasury for good.

The crown is an imposing sight – it is octagonal in shape made up of eight gold plates which are rounded off at the top and studded with pearls and precious stones. The stones are not cut like modern jewels but polished into rounded shapes. They were placed into special openings cut into the metal, so that when the light streamed through the stones would appear to shine from within. Naturally, the replica made by jeweler Jiří Urban is far more modest – made of gold-plated silver instead of gold and in some cases coloured glass in place of the precious stones. Even so it cost 800,000 crowns and took over a year to make with a team of ten people helping.

The replica of the precious crown will be placed next to the St Wenceslas crown, created during the reign of Charles IV, for a couple of months, before being displayed at a permanent exhibition of medieval Central Bohemia in Prague's Old Town.

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Photo: CTK

Long gone, but not forgotten. In the late 1960s the old town of Most, dating back to 1300 was wiped off the map in order to make way for coal mining. A small part of the town remained – of little historic consequence - around which the new Most was gradually created. The old town’s most precious historic legacy, the late Gothic Church of the Ascension of the Virgin Mary dating back to 1600 was lifted onto an enormous platform and moved by rail to the new Most 841 metres away. Everything else was lost – houses built between 1300 –1500 were razed to the ground and 4,000 people were moved to blocks of flats. The decision is criticized to this day and a team of enthusiasts is now building a miniaturized model of the old town where it used to stand. The model is being built on a 1: 25 scale according to a map of the town made in 1953 and photographs from the first half of the twentieth century.

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Photo: archive of ČRo 7 - Radio Prague

Czech schoolchildren and students are once again opting to learn Russian as a second language, the daily Hospodářské noviny reported this week. After decades of compulsory Russian at school when the language was spurned as a symbol of the communist regime and worse, the language of the hated 1968 invaders, Russian is again picking up and increasingly Czech kids are choosing it as a second foreign language, after English. Some see its potential in view of their career since many Czech companies are now doing business with Russia, others think that as a Slav language it will be easier to learn, which is to a certain extent true. While after the fall of the Iron Curtain interest in Russian was practically non-existent and schools had to re-qualify their teachers of Russian in order to be able to keep them, today Russian has become more popular than either German or French. Clearly the days when Czechs accosted on the street by Russian tourists pretended not to understand what they were asked and occasionally even sent them in the wrong direction – are well and truly over.

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A small Czech Ostrava brewery has unveiled a new brand of beer exclusively for women going by the name of Pikard. Unlike the majority of Czech brews the beer for women is made largely from wheat, using French yeast and contains a fruit ingredient which is being kept secret. The beer is a deep golden colour with an extra thick cap and is served in tall glasses with a slice of orange or lemon.

While feminine-oriented brews are available in Britain, Germany and Poland, the Czech Republic which has the highest consumption of beer per head in the world has only made unisex-brands to date. The Ostrava brewery says Pikard will be a limited edition to test the market in the summer months.

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In Europe we hear about the Lisbon treaty day in, day out. But how many people in EU member states have actually read it? Not many here in the Czech Republic. Last week a group of 150 Czechs held a non-stop reading of the entire Lisbon Treaty to prove that the European Union's reform text is readable. It took them six hours and 48 minutes. The reading was organized by Eutis, a non-governmental organisation founded to boost Czech awareness of the EU, in cooperation with Palacký University in the eastern Czech town of Olomouc. Those who took part in the reading say they wanted to refute one of the most common arguments critics of the treaty use – that in its present form the treaty is confusing and unreadable. The reading came just 10 days ahead of a vote on the treaty by the Czech Senate, scheduled for May 6. Let us hope it inspired those senators who hadn’t yet read it to follow suit.