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A long-awaited new pedestrian bridge connecting Prague’s districts of Holešovice and Karlín officially opened to the public on Friday. The Štvanice footbridge is named after the island it crosses, but it is also referred to as HolKa, girl in Czech, after the two districts it connects.

If you’re planning to watch the Barbie film, you might be surprised to learn that the drinks and pitchers in the Barbie bar were designed by Czech glassware company Klimchi . I spoke with CEO Lukáš Klimčák on what this feature in one of the summer’s biggest films means for his company, and for the reputation of Czech design.

Prague football club Bohemians 1905 surprised almost everyone when an unexpected fourth place in Czech football’s top flight last season earned them a place in the qualifiers for the Europa Conference League – their first European competition since 1987. The team, and hundreds of fans, are now in Norway in the town of Bodø, located just north of the Arctic Circle, to take on the local team.

After years of negotiations, the Jewish Museum in Prague has received a substantial part of a unique art collection discovered in 2018. Nearly 380 paintings and drawings by the artist Gertrud Kauders have been donated to the institution by her relatives. Unlike her famous contemporary Franz Kafka, Kauders remained completely forgotten for nearly 80 years. I discussed the discovery with the museum’s chief curator Michaela Sidenberg:

David Strauzz is a mixed media artist who was born to Czech immigrants in Ontario, Canada. Since 2015, he has lived in Prague, where he came to public attention mainly through his large-scale murals. He also runs the MEGA Gallery, located at the Karlovo náměstí and Můstek metro stations, which promotes street art. I met with David Strauzz in his studio in the Pragovka Art District in Vysočany and started by asking him what brought him to the Czech capital in the first place:

Jiřina Šiklová and Madeleine Albright are just two of the women who streets and green areas will be named after in a new Prague district called Smíchov City, after a City Council vote this week. While Albright was a US secretary of state, Šiklová was a communist-era dissident who pioneered gender studies in this country in the 1990s. I spoke to Lucie Přibyl, librarian at the Center for Gender Studies in Prague – which the academic created – about her legacy.

One of Czechia’s biggest alternative music festivals,  Pop Messe , takes place in Brno this coming Friday and Saturday. The third edition of the event has a slightly different venue but, with names like Spiritualized and Young Fathers, boasts perhaps its strongest lineup to date. I spoke to Pop Messe’s founder Tomáš Kolar.

With its monumental neo-classicist style and lavish interiors, Prague’s Petschek Palace was one of the most expensive buildings of its time when built in the 1920s. However today most Czechs don’t associate the palace with architecture but rather with its dark history as the headquarters of the Nazi secret police during the Second World War.

We’ve probably all taken back some sand or a shell from the beach as a souvenir from a holiday before. But what about a gecko or a turtle? According to Prague Airport customs officers, coming across illegal food items, plants or even exotic animals in people’s luggage is an almost everyday occurrence during the summer holidays.

2022 and the start of 2023 brought a great deal of concern around affordability and inflation for Czechs. But new data from the Czech Statistical Office shows that Czechs are feeling slightly more optimistic about their country’s economic situation, as Jiří Obst, head of its Business Cycle Surveys Unit explained to Radio Prague.