Even the most famous and largest landmark in the Czech capital Prague Castle — visited by a record 2.7 million people in 2025 — may conceal magical corners unknown to many. One such place is Masaryk’s Lookout, crowned by a majestic 200-year-old linden tree. It was here that the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, liked to sit and reflect. Today, dendrologists are striving to save his beloved tree, which is gradually dying, by propagating it for future generations.

Zuzana Marešová, one of the 669 mostly Jewish children sent from Prague to London at the outbreak of the Second World War in the rescue operation organised by Nicholas Winton and his colleagues, has died at the age of 94.

The Prague Castle Guard is looking to take on new recruits and has relaxed its long-standing selection criteria. For many years, only candidates between 178 and 188 centimeters tall were eligible to serve. The new height range is more tolerant.

Peasants have long been sidelined in history books. Jakub Beneš, Associate Professor at UCL’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London, seeks to restore them to the historical narrative, focusing on the area of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. In his new book, he reveals the overlooked peasant movements and revolutions that shaped the politics of the first half of the 20th century. In an interview with Radio Prague International, he explains why this underrepresented perspective is so compelling and draws possible parallels with the present.

Czech scientists have announced an extraordinary discovery in the Moravian Karst in South Moravia. Inside one of the region’s caves, they found a rare engraving of a horse — an image created around 15,000 years ago, at the very end of the last Ice Age, when people still lived in and around caves.

On January 16, Czechs mark 57 years since Jan Palach set himself alight in the centre of Prague. The twenty-year-old student’s shocking act was intended to rouse Czechoslovak society from growing apathy in the wake of the Soviet occupation of August 1968.

As of January 1, 2026, Czechia introduced a new amendment to its Criminal Code, placing communism on the same legal footing as Nazism. So, what does the law actually prohibit? Why was it adopted, and how does it reflect Czechia’s understanding of its past? I discussed these questions and more with historian and First Deputy Director of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes Kamil Nedvědický.

Jiří Viktor Daneš is a name many Czechs may not recognize today. He was a geographer, explorer, and diplomat who set out for Australia in 1920 as Czechoslovakia’s very first consul on the continent. During his travels across Australia, and later through the Pacific, Japan, and Canada, he took thousands of photographs—capturing landscapes, people, and everyday life along the way. Those photographs, rescued and painstakingly restored after being severely damaged in the floods of 2002, have now been brought together in a newly published book, Around the World: The Flooded Photographic Diary of Jiří Viktor Daneš. Radio Prague International spoke with one of its authors, historian Tomáš Pavlíček.

Second World War veteran Miloslav Masopust has died at the age of 101. In 1944, he joined the First Czechoslovak Army Corps in the Soviet Union and took part in the liberation of Slovakia. Thanks to recorded testimonies, we can hear his story in his own words.

The statue of 82 children in Lidice, which commemorates the destruction of the Central Bohemian village by the Nazis in 1942, is set to undergo a major restoration in the next five years. The Lidice Memorial has now presented what the renovation will involve and how the work will be carried out.