Karlovy Vary, the most famous Czech spa town with one of the largest concentrations of hot springs in Europe, has hosted kings, poets and celebrities.
The idea for The Joke came to Milan Kundera after hearing of a girl jailed for stealing cemetery flowers. He imagined a life with sexuality and love tragically discrete.
Bianca Bellová’s The Lake is a powerful archetypal story of a young boy who searches for his roots in a fictitious land, with references to a past Soviet occupation.
With more than 30 books and 1.5 million copies sold under his belt, Michal Viewegh is quite possibly the Czech Republic’s most popular contemporary author.
Karel Čapek’s penultimate play was a dark satire of fascism, set against the backdrop of a pandemic, as prescient then as it is topical today, in the era of coronavirus.
Translated into more than 30 languages, Too Loud a Solitude is perhaps the most famous of Bohumil Hrabal’s novels.
Prague’s Kampa Island, located on the west bank of the Vltava River, is among the Lesser Quarter’s most idyllic and romantic spots.
The Seven Churches, a Gothic murder mystery by Miloš Urban, has been described as one of the most haunting and terrifying thrillers to come out of Europe in years.
In November 1989, Václav Havel was a dissident playwright whose works hadn't been staged in Czechoslovakia since the Soviet occupation. We look back at his literary legacy.
In a hidden corner of Prague’s Hradčany, the extremely picturesque Nový Svět (New World) district has over the years been home to servants, paupers and artists.
Prague’s Faust House, located on the southern side of Charles Square, is associated with a plethora of mysterious stories and legends.
Directly across from Charles Bridge in Prague’s Old Town stands the Clementinum, home to the National Library and the oldest functioning meteorological station in Czechia.
The Daliborka tower at Prague Castle is known to most Czechs as a prison and the site of a well-known national legend. It tells the story of Dalibor of Kozojedy.
The Cremator by Ladislav Fuks traces its protagonist’s chilling drift into collaboration and murder – and became the basis for one of the greatest ever Czech films.
Patrik Ouředník’s 2001 book Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century is one of the shortest and most fast paced histories of humanity's bloodiest century. A…
Ota Pavel’s collection of autobiographical short stories from rural Bohemia How I Came to Know Fish bears powerful testimony of the war seen through the eyes of a child.
In the first episode of our series Landmark Prague Stories, we visit the Church of Our Lady Victorious in the Lesser Quarter with its famous statue of the Infant Jesus.
Prague's Vyšehrad, which lies on the other side of the river, was once a rival to Prague Castle itself. Today it remains a site connected to many core Czech national myths.
The Devil’s Workshop, a short novel written by the award-winning author Jáchym Topol in 2009, focuses on some of the darkest chapters of Europe’s history.
The Jewish Quarter, also known as Josefov, is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Prague with a complex of beautifully preserved Jewish historical monuments.
Jaroslav Seifert was one of the greatest Czech poets of the 20th century and is the only Czech Nobel Prize winner for literature.
Just a few months ago, a new museum opened in the village of Ostrov, boasting the country’s biggest private collection of Czech and Moravian traditional folk costumes.
The first built in Czechoslovakia after the country’s founding in 1918, in Prague’s Kbely district, today houses a unique aviation museum.
Poet and novelist Marek Šindelka, a leading author of the generation which came of age after the Velvet Revolution, on his best-known works: Aberrant and Material Fatigue.
The Museum of Glass and Jewelry in Jablonec nad Nisou traces the history of Bohemian glass making over seven centuries.
