The Czech Republic is a small land in the heart of the European continent. It is a country with a rich and eventful history, a country, or more precisely a union of several historic lands, with a rich cultural and artistic tradition imprinted on hundreds and thousands of towns, castles, chateaux and religious structures all over Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, as well as on the cultivated Czech landscape itself. The Czech Republic is a typical inland state surrounded by many mountain ranges as a natural frontiers. These mountains aren’t too high – the average above sea level is about 1400 m – but are covered with forests and meadows giving visitors a lot of nice views. Good marked paths lead a tourist through this beautiful countryside. A heavy network of good roads and railway connects the lowland around towns and rivers with the under-mountain areas of Giant Mountains, Eagle Mountains, Krusne and Jizerske Mountains and Sumava in Bohemia and Jeseniky and Beskydy Mountains in Moravia. A good number of tourist centers with hotels and mountains huts make good conditions for winter and summer staying for skiing, hiking and cycling. The Czech Republic is the main European water-shed and many boating men like rivers Vltava, Ohre, Berounka, Luznice, Sazava, Orlice and Morava. In the southern Bohemia there are thousands of ponds. Not only fisher-men like this area but it is a good place for recreation and swimming too. You can find a lot of sandstone rocks in the northern Bohemia, so called Bohemian Paradise. This area is attanded by many tourists and climbers. The divers and sport-speleologists like Moravian Cars around the abyss Macocha with its underground river Punkva. Near Prague there you can find beautiful places in the nature reservations and old Gothic castles Karlstejn, Zvikov and Orlik. Some old towns with their historic character as Telc, Cesky Krumlov, Tabor or Kutna Hora attracts visitors too. They belong to the world cultural heritage and are on the UNESCO list. In many respects, the Czech Republic is a very suitable place for the restful holiday in the picturesque countryside and you will go home full of many unforgettable impressions.

Prague

The city of a hundred spires built at the meandering river Vltava has for centuries been quickening the heartbeat of poets, painters and photographers. It is a cult, administrative, cultural, business and industrial centre of the Czech Republic, which has been a capital of the kingdom and the later republic, and the residence of rulers and archbishops, for an uninterrupted period of a thousand years. The history of Prague in many ways resembles the history of the Czech state. First a settlement around Prague Castle and, later, the Vysehrad Castle, it became a town with all its privileges in the 1230s, and developed into a self-confident agglomeration of Prague towns; under Emperor Charles IV in the 14th century, it was one of the capitals of the Christian world, the seat of the first trans-Alpine university and a huge building works, and 250 years later, during the reign of Rudolph II, a mysterious metropolis full of artists, scientists and learned rabbis. The Baroque entered Prague, and the domes of its churches, the palace courtyards and gardens have since adorned the historic part of the town with the ancient Old Town horologe the only just measure of its time. The town that saw magnificent coronation processions, Mozart’s operas and Beethoven’s concerts, later resounded with the music of Dvorak and Mahler. The melancholic, lyrical Prague of Kafka, Rilke and Meyrink is also where Karel Capek invented his robots and Jaroslav Hasek his surreal Good Soldier Schweik, where the aging President Masaryk met with the young Einstein, when the Art Nouveau was at its height in Prague. The town has survived wars, crises and different types of political regimes, to see its onetime luster restored.