Next year, a museum of Škoda cars will open in in Mrač u Čerčany, near Prague. It will feature, among other things, the largest collection of sports Škoda cars in the world. “First, we searched and renovated unique Škoda racing, prototype, and utility vehicles together. In the past, it was not yet fashionable to collect Skoda cars. We bought many of them at the end of their racing careers. We gradually tracked them down here and throughout Europe and created a collection of about a hundred unique cars,” says Tomáš Hervert, who is, among other things, the Vice-Chairman of Seznam. The World of Škoda Museum will open next spring. It is created in the former production area of Jawa and other motoring brands. “The area we discovered has been associated with motoring since 1945. Before Jawa, it was part of the national company Autobrzdy Jablonec and before that, the national company PAL. And this brings us to the first and most interesting owner, which was the company J. Kraucher et al, one of the first First Republic car racers and a very skillful designer,” added Hervert. At the same time, the museum can be supported at HitHit, where you can buy tickets...
František Kupka’s painting Divertimento II was sold for 90.24 million crowns including an auction surcharge at today’s auction in Prague, which is a new Czech auction record. Until now, the record price paid at the domestic art auction was 78.65 million crowns for the painting Queen of Spades by the painter Toyen, which was sold in October this year. Divertimento II is one of the most important works of his abstract period of the 1930s. The name Divertimento is associated with Italian musical terminology and refers to a light-hearted or entertaining instrumental composition. Music, of which Kupka was a great admirer, was incorporated into the painter’s early works and was later repeatedly transformed by him into a play of lines and shapes, into mechanisms whose emotional effects create a deeply sensory experience, reflected in the very name of the works. The painting brings ingenious intersections of circular surfaces and their various overlapping sections, through which especially a distinctive black curve penetrates, which acquires circular shapes in its bends. Kupka thus excluded any orthogonal relationships from the painting, settling for rounded sections, each of which he gave one angled, monochrome colour. The painting is firmly connected with Divertimento I, which is...
On November 24, 1985, the construction of the Žižkov Tower began. The project was created under the leadership of the architect Václav Aulický and the structural designer Jiří Kozák in 1984; the foundation stone of the Žižkov tower was laid one year later. And although the aesthetic consideration was not important to the contracting authority at all at that time, the team around Aulický took a long time over the project and designed the object suggestive of a rocket ready to start. The tower stands 216 meters high, altitude of the observatory is 93 m, the hotel room altitude is 70 m, restaurant’s altitude is 66 m, with a capacity of 180 people. It weighs 11,800 tons and is also used as a meteorological observatory. It is a member of the World Federation of Great Towers. In 2000, ten fiberglass sculptures by Czech artist David Černý called “Miminka” (Babies), crawling up and down were attached to the tower’s pillars.
Iconic landmarks around the world turned blue to mark World Children’s Day today, as UNICEF celebrated the 31st anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. In Prague, will be lit up in blue the Petrin Tower, the Dancing House, and the Karolinum. World Children’s Day – celebrated on 20th November every year – aims to raise awareness and funds for the millions of children that are denied their right to adequate health care, nutrition, education and protection. “Around the world, children and young people are taking the lead and demanding urgent action on the issues they care about, like the climate crisis, the rise of mental illness and the lack of opportunities,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “This World Children’s Day provides world leaders with a momentous opportunity to heed these calls and recommit to the rights of every child now and for future generations.” VICTIMS TO PANDEMIC “This is a universal crisis and, for some children, the impact will be lifelong,” said the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in an October report. Such an impact is first of all evident in the number of...
As the second wave of Covid-19 ripped through Prague, a network of concerned citizens sprang into action to feed the cities’ homeless population who are battling freezing temperatures on empty, dark streets. The Non-Governmental-Organisation Místní místním (Locals for Locals in English) has coordinated a web of restaurants, social services and volunteers who make and deliver free baguettes to people living on the street. Over 1,000 baguettes have been distributed so far across the city. “That’s the official number, but I imagine it’s higher in reality because some cafes provide more baguettes than we can pay them for,” says Ester Pacltová, co-founder of Místní místním. Ester speaks highly of the group of ‘solidarity cafes’, saying that they have reacted quickly to a desperate situation. “The owners always ask how people in the streets like the baguettes, and if they should change anything,” she says proudly. Any hospitality business can join the solidarity network. Místní místním raise the money, which they then give to the cafes so they can buy the ingredients for the baguettes. Originally, volunteers would pick up the food and courier it to Místní místním’s partners, the Salvation Army and Naděje (Hope in English). “These social workers are in...
Today, Aneta Langerová – Czech singer and musician, winner of the Czech Republic competition, SuperStar – performed the song A Prayer for Marta from the balcony of the National Theater. One of the iconic moments of Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution came when long-censored popular singer Marta Kubišová emerged onto a balcony above Vaclavské náměstí square to sing a hymn-like ballad known as A Prayer For Marta (Modlitba pro Martu). Not only had the song itself been banned in the aftermath of the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968, but Kubišová herself had also been silent for the best part of twenty years. On the 10th of December 1988, she was invited to take part in the first ‘authorized’ demonstration for the 40th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For the first time since 1970, Marta performed again. The music was composed by Jindřich Brabec, the text-based on motifs by Jan Amos Komenský was written by Petr Rada. Two days after the occupation, Marta Kubišová sang it in the Czechoslovak recording studio. The tape was immediately brought to Czechoslovak Radio, and for the first time, it reached its listeners at the most emotionally charged time. On October 28th, 1995 president Vaclav...
The celebrations of 17 November (“Struggle for Freedom and Democracy Day”) in the Czech Republic this year are mostly happening in the online environment, but some events will be happening in the streets despite limitations on freedom of movement because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Albertov neighborhood of Prague, there will not be a stage set up, as has become traditional, but it will still be possible to light candles there to commemorate the events of 1939 when students held a demonstration against Nazi occupation in 1939, and the events of 1989, when a student demonstration started the Velvet Revolution. Approximately 20 people are expected to march through the capital as part of a masked parade called the “Velvet Sanctification” (Sametové posvícení), and politicians are anticipated to lay floral offerings at the memorial plaque on Národní třída. An event called the “Concert for the Future” will take the form of a live broadcast of performers and speakers, without an audience. Those planning to perform, including the band The Plastic People of the Universe, musician Tomáš Klus, and Czech-Polish pop-rock singer Ewa Farna, will do so in an enclosed space on Wenceslas Square. Flowers are also customarily laid on Žitná...
A 2,700 kg Lego model of Prague Central Station has appeared inside the cities busiest station.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was born on this day, i.e, November 16, in 1945. This year, UNESCO marks the 75th birthday and 48th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention and it will continue to “protect the world’s most outstanding places” around the globe. According to the official website, the UN body’s mission is to contribute to the building of a culture of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, sciences, culture, communication and information. The idea of creating an international movement for protecting heritage had emerged after World War 1. The UN agency works to create the condition for dialogue among civilisations, cultures and people, based upon respect for commonly shared values. UNESCO believes that through this dialogue that the world can achieve global visions of sustainable development encompassing observance of human rights, mutual respect and the allegation of poverty, all of which are at the heart of its mission and activities. UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Sites in the Czech Republic The first sites on the territory of the present Czech Republic were inscribed at the 16th Session of the World Heritage Committee, held in Santa Fe, United States in 1992. At that...
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk had led the country from its independence in 1918 for the next seventeen years, and is known as “Father of the Nation”. In early 1915, after the outbreak of World War I, Masaryk made his way to western Europe, where he was recognized as the representative of the underground Czech liberation movement and conducted a vigorous campaign against Austria-Hungary and Germany. Heading the government-in-exile, he gathered Western support for Czechoslovakia. His colleague Eduard Beneš also greatly contributed to the cause as did Slovak scholar and astronomer Milan Rastislav Štefánik. During a trip to the USA, Masaryk carried out negotiations with President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State Robert Lansing and convinced them of the need for Czechoslovak independence. On June 3, 1918, Czechoslovakia was recognized as an Allied power, and its frontiers were demarcated according to Masaryk’s outline. As Masaryk had promised, the new multinational state respected the minority rights of its large German and Hungarian ethnic groups. The Lansing Declaration of May 1918 expressed the sympathy of the U.S. government with the Czechoslovak freedom movement, and Czechoslovakia’s liberation became one of Wilson’s Fourteen Points for the post-World War I peace settlement. Wilson supported the emergence of an independent Czechoslovakia, the...
On Wednesday, November 17, thirty buildings around Prague will light up with the colours of the Czech flag. Prague Castle, the Congress Center, the Žižkov Tower, the Petrin Tower, the Dancing House, the Straka Academy, university buildings and the headquarters of several companies will be colored in blue, red and white. The Slovak singer Jana Kirschner will perform at 17:11 the song “A Prayer for Marta” (Modlitba pro Martu), which was banned under communism after the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968 and then revived during the Velvet Revolution. Among other things, there will be an outdoor projection on the facade of the Máj department store, focusing on the current political situation in Belarus. There will also be a program inside buildings – theater performances, a talk show, art workshops, and debates. Visitors can also look forward to street exhibitions or educational walks mapping the period of communism, the events of the Velvet Revolution, and the early post-revolutionary years. November 17th is Twice as Important for Czechs November 17th is not at all just an ordinary day in the Czech Republic. It is a very important day for Czechs not only for one but for two reasons. The original event that 17 November...
Czech sculptor Jaroslav Róna is installing a new work in Pankrác – a ten-metre giraffe cast in bronze. But it’s pretty different to anything you’d find in the wild, to say the least. Rona was inspired by Pokémon, a Japanese anime television cartoon series that premiered in Japan on April 1, 1997. He worked on it for over four years. About the author Born in Prague on 27 January 1957, Jaroslav Róna is a sculptor, painter, and performer belonging to the postmodern generation of the 1980s which has experienced a period of communism, including its fall and transition to democracy. He was a member of the Tvrdohlaví (The Stubborn), a significant art group that participated in activities leading to the liberation of the art scene from socialist demagogy. He has also worked as a theatre and film designer and participated in architectural work. The main focus of his work is creating sculptures for public spaces as well as painting. From 2005 to 2012 he taught the art of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. His most famous sculptures include The Franz Kafka Monument in Prague for which he received the Grand Prix of the Society of Czech...
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