57 Fun Facts About Czech Republic

The landlocked Czech Republic borders Germany, Slovakia and which two other countries?

Austria and Poland. Czechoslovakia also bordered Hungary until 1993, when Slovakia became independent and took that border with it.

By what short name did the Czech foreign ministry recommend the country be called in English?

Czechia was the ministry's choice as early as 1993, yet it took until 2016 for the government to approve it and register it with the United Nations as the country's official short name.

Silver coins known as thalers, struck in the Bohemian mining town of Jáchymov, gave their name to which currency?

The dollar began as the Joachimsthaler, named for Joachimsthal, as Jáchymov was then known, and shortened to 'thaler'. American colonists used the word for Spanish silver coins, and the young United States kept the name.

The 1989 protests that ended communist rule in Czechoslovakia are known as what?

The Velvet Revolution was a non-violent handover: after riot police broke up a student march in Prague on 17 November 1989, strikes and daily mass rallies made the Communist Party give up power within weeks.

Which playwright and dissident became the first president of the Czech Republic?

Václav Havel served four years in a communist prison for his human-rights work. As Czechoslovakia's president he resigned in 1992 rather than preside over its breakup, then won the top office of the new Czech state.

As of 2023, the Czech Republic held which world record related to beer?

Highest consumption per person: China drinks the most beer in total, but Czechs out-drink everyone per head, and 2023 was their 31st straight year on top.

The world's first pale lager was brewed in 1842 in which Czech city?

Plzeň's citizens founded a shared brewery and hired a Bavarian brewer, Josef Groll, who made the first batch in October 1842. His golden lager gave its name to pilsner, a style now brewed around the world.

The Czech brewery Budweiser Budvar has fought a century-long trademark battle with which company?

Anheuser-Busch, the American maker of Budweiser, has fought over the name since the early 1900s. The Czech beer is therefore sold as Czechvar in North America, while the American one goes by 'Bud' in most of Europe.

The Czech Republic covers three historical lands: Bohemia, Moravia and the southern tip of which other?

Silesia was mostly lost in 1742, when Frederick the Great of Prussia took it from the Habsburgs. The sliver they held on to, around Opava and Ostrava, is today's Czech Silesia.

The word 'robot' was introduced to the world by which Czech writer's 1920 play R.U.R.?

Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. premiered in 1921; the word comes from robota, forced labour, and Čapek credited his brother Josef, a painter, with suggesting it.

The 1618 Defenestration of Prague, in which two royal governors were thrown from a window, sparked which war?

The Thirty Years' War began with this Bohemian revolt against Habsburg rule; the Protestant rebels' defeat at White Mountain in 1620 followed, and the wider war ran until 1648.

In a later Protestant telling, the officials thrown from a Prague window in 1618 landed on what?

A dung heap was probably the Protestant answer to Catholics, who said angels or the Virgin Mary had saved the three men. One of them, the secretary Fabricius, was later granted the noble name 'von Hohenfall': of Highfall.

Which Czech university did a Bohemian king found in 1348?

Charles University, founded by Charles IV, lost many of its foreign scholars in 1409, when a royal decree handed control to the Czech masters. The outvoted professors and students walked out and founded the University of Leipzig.

Charles Bridge in Prague crosses which river?

Vltava floods badly damaged the earlier Judith Bridge in 1342, so a stone replacement was begun in 1357. It remained the only way across the river in Prague until 1841.

On Prague's astronomical clock, which figure rings a bell to start the hourly procession of Apostles?

A skeleton, standing for Death, pulls the bell rope and nods towards a Turk, who turns his head away in refusal. The oldest parts of the clock date from 1410.

Guinness World Records lists which Czech landmark as the largest ancient castle in the world?

Prague Castle, begun in the 9th century, covers about seven hectares. Its cathedral guards the Bohemian crown jewels behind a door with seven locks, whose keys are held by seven officials, the president among them.

The 1968 Prague Spring was crushed by an invasion of forces from which alliance?

The Warsaw Pact turned on one of its own members: overnight on 20–21 August 1968, Soviet-led armies occupied Czechoslovakia and ended Alexander Dubček's reforms, while fellow member Romania refused to take part.

Czechoslovakia added a blue triangle to its flag in 1920 because the white-over-red design matched which country's?

Poland's flag is the same white over red, so the blue wedge went on in 1920. The Czech Republic kept the design in 1993, despite an agreement that neither successor state would use Czechoslovakia's symbols.

What is the currency of the Czech Republic?

Koruna, the Czech crown, replaced the Czechoslovak koruna in 1993. The country is legally bound to adopt the euro one day, but it has no target date for doing so.

Sněžka, the highest peak in the Czech Republic, stands in which mountain range?

The Giant Mountains, Krkonoše in Czech, top out at about 1,600 metres on Sněžka. The state border runs over the summit itself, so walkers can step from one country into another at the top.

Under the Treaty of Versailles, Czechoslovakia got a 99-year lease on docks in which port city?

Hamburg gave the landlocked country a foothold on the sea, where goods brought down river could be moved onto ocean-going ships. The lease began in 1929, passed to the Czech Republic in 1993 and was due to run until 2028.

Which organisation did the Czech Republic join in May 2004?

The European Union took in ten states at once, most of them from the old communist bloc. Border checks with the Czech Republic's neighbours ended in December 2007, when it joined the Schengen Area.

Which Moravian city is home to Palacký University, founded in 1573 and the second oldest in the Czech Republic?

Olomouc had a Jesuit college that won the right to award degrees in 1573, turning it into a university. The city's 35-metre Holy Trinity Column, a Baroque showpiece, is on UNESCO's World Heritage list.

Which composer wrote the 'New World' Symphony while directing a conservatory in New York?

Antonín Dvořák directed the National Conservatory in New York from 1892 to 1895, writing the symphony in 1893 and his 'American' quartet that summer in Spillville, Iowa.

Bedřich Smetana finished Má vlast, his six tone poems about Bohemia, years after losing what?

His hearing failed completely in late 1874, the year he gave up conducting Prague's opera. Smetana composed almost all of Má vlast, 'My Fatherland', without being able to hear a note of it.

Franz Kafka, born in Prague in 1883, wrote The Metamorphosis and The Trial in which language?

German was the language of Kafka's home and schooling in Prague. He asked for his unpublished manuscripts to be destroyed, but his friend Max Brod ignored the request and published them.

Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, went into exile in which country in 1975?

France became his home for good. Stripped of his Czechoslovak citizenship in 1979, Kundera took French nationality in 1981 and from the 1990s wrote his novels in French.

Which Czech-born tennis player won nine Wimbledon singles titles between 1978 and 1990?

Martina Navratilova asked the United States for asylum at 18, during the 1975 US Open, and Czechoslovakia stripped her of citizenship. She won her first two Wimbledon titles before becoming an American in 1981.

Emil Zátopek won which events at the 1952 Olympics?

5,000 m, 10,000 m and marathon: the marathon was the first he had ever run, and nobody has matched the treble since. His wife Dana won javelin gold at the same Games.

As of 2024, Věra Čáslavská is the only gymnast to have done what at the Olympics?

Won gold in every individual event: the all-around, vault and beam in 1964, then bars and floor in 1968. She capped her last gold by marrying the runner Josef Odložil in Mexico City before the Games were over.

A chapel at Sedlec, near Kutná Hora, has a chandelier and a coat of arms made from what?

Human bones from tens of thousands of people fill the Sedlec Ossuary. The woodcarver František Rint arranged them around 1870, and his chandelier is said to use every bone in the body.

Gregor Mendel carried out his pea-plant genetics experiments at an abbey in which Czech city?

Brno's St Thomas's Abbey is where Mendel crossed pea plants from 1856 to 1863 and worked out the rules of heredity. His results went unrecognised until 1900, sixteen years after his death, when three botanists confirmed them.

Czech chemist Otto Wichterle built a home-made machine in 1961 to make which everyday items?

Soft contact lenses: in late 1961 Wichterle cast them at home on a rig built from a children's Merkur construction kit and a bicycle dynamo.

Which plastic explosive was invented by chemists in communist Czechoslovakia?

Semtex is thought to take its name from Semtín, the Pardubice suburb where it was made. After it was linked to the bomb that brought down a jumbo jet over Lockerbie in 1988, its makers began adding a marker that detectors can pick up.

The car maker Škoda, headquartered in Mladá Boleslav, has been wholly owned since 2000 by which group?

Volkswagen beat Renault on the 1990 shortlist to partner the firm as it left state hands, and owned it outright by 2000. Škoda began in the 1890s as Laurin & Klement, a maker of bicycles.

By tradition, the real 'Good King Wenceslas', a tenth-century duke of Bohemia, was murdered by whom?

His younger brother Boleslaus, in the traditional account, had him killed at Stará Boleslav and took his place as duke. The victim was soon venerated as a saint, and his feast day, 28 September, is now a Czech public holiday.

The followers of which reformer defeated five crusades sent against Bohemia in the fifteenth century?

Jan Hus travelled to a church council under a royal promise of safe conduct and was burned at the stake there in 1415. His followers, the Hussites, rose in revolt and beat off five crusades between 1420 and 1431.

The 1938 agreement that let Nazi Germany annex the Czech borderlands was signed in which city?

Munich's deal was struck by Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier, with Czechoslovakia told to submit or fight alone. Chamberlain promised 'peace for our time', but six months later Hitler held the rest of the Czech lands.

In 1978 Czechoslovakia's Vladimír Remek became the first person in space from outside which two countries?

The USSR and the USA had launched every space traveller before him. Remek flew to the Salyut 6 station as the first guest of the Soviet Interkosmos programme, and decades later went back to Moscow as the Czech ambassador.

The name Bohemia is traditionally traced to which people, who lived there before the Slavs?

Boii, a Gallic tribe, left their name in the Latin Boiohaemum, 'home of the Boii'. They were driven out some two thousand years ago, centuries before the Czechs' Slavic ancestors arrived, yet the name stuck.

Vepřo-knedlo-zelo, a Czech national dish, is roast pork with cabbage and what?

Bread dumplings are the 'knedlo' in the name, which simply strings together the Czech words for pork, dumpling and cabbage. The dough is steamed in a loaf and sliced like bread.

Becherovka, the herbal bitters drunk as a digestif, is produced in which spa town?

Karlovy Vary has made Becherovka since 1807 from a secret blend of herbs and spices. Josef Becher got the recipe from a visiting doctor, Christian Frobrig, and reworked it before putting it on sale as 'English Bitter'.

Kofola was communist Czechoslovakia's home-grown substitute for which Western drink?

Cola from the West could not be bought, so state chemists built Kofola on a syrup made with surplus caffeine from coffee roasting. After 1989 it had to compete with the brands it once stood in for.

Miloš Forman won Best Director Oscars for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and which other film?

Amadeus brought Forman home: he shot it in Prague and staged its opera scenes in the Estates Theatre, where Mozart's Don Giovanni had its first performance two centuries earlier. The film won eight Oscars.

Art Nouveau artist Alfons Mucha made his name in Paris with theatrical posters for which actress?

Sarah Bernhardt is said to have ordered a poster for her play Gismonda the day after Christmas 1894, and Mucha's design was all over Paris by New Year's Day. Delighted, she put him under contract to design her posters, sets and costumes.

In Jewish folklore, the golem linked to a 16th-century Prague rabbi is a being made from what?

Clay or mud, shaped and brought to life by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel in the legend to protect Prague's Jews. Its lifeless body is said to lie in the attic of the Old New Synagogue to this day.

As of 2023, citizens of which country formed the largest group of foreigners living in the Czech Republic?

Ukraine already supplied the largest group of foreign residents well before the war. After Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, several hundred thousand more people arrived under temporary protection.

A graffiti-covered wall in Prague became a symbol of protest in the 1980s after fans painted tributes to which musician?

John Lennon's murder in 1980 moved an unknown admirer to make a small memorial to him there. The wall was painted over the following spring, but new slogans kept appearing however often it was repainted.

Which fish, traditionally sold live from street tubs, is the Czech Christmas Eve dinner?

Carp is breaded, fried and served with potato salad. Many families carry theirs home alive and keep it swimming in the bathtub until Christmas Eve.

Under which president, in office from 1918 to 1935, did Czechoslovakia become a stable parliamentary democracy?

Tomáš Masaryk, a philosophy professor, spent the First World War in exile campaigning for an independent state. His middle name, Garrigue, was his American wife's surname, which he added to his own when they married.

Water from the Czech Republic drains into which three seas?

North, Baltic and Black: the Elbe, the Oder and the Morava carry the country's water away in three directions. On one border peak, Klepáč, rain falling a few steps apart ends up in three different seas.

Which lively dance spread from Bohemia to ballrooms across Europe in the 1840s?

The polka was the rage in Prague by 1835 and soon far beyond. It became so fashionable that makers named all kinds of goods after it, which is probably how polka dots got their name.

Prague's Dancing House, nicknamed 'Ginger and Fred', was designed by Vlado Milunić with which famous architect?

Frank Gehry joined the project for a riverside plot left empty since an American air raid in February 1945. The stone tower stands for Fred Astaire and the pinched glass one for Ginger Rogers.

In 2024 a Czech company was the world's largest producer of which music format?

Vinyl records have been pressed by GZ Media at Loděnice since 1951. The vinyl revival made the company the world's biggest presser, turning out tens of millions of discs a year.

Which US secretary of state was born in Prague in 1937?

Madeleine Albright's family fled twice, to London in 1939 and to the United States after the communist coup of 1948. Her father, Josef Korbel, went on to teach Condoleezza Rice at the University of Denver.

Which kitchen staple was invented in the Moravian town of Dačice after a factory director's wife cut herself chopping a solid block?

The sugar cube replaced the hard loaves in which sugar was sold, which had to be chopped up at home. Jakub Kryštof Rad patented his cube press in 1843, but the factory failed and the idea was forgotten for years.

As of 2025, which Czech winger and 1998 Olympic champion ranked second to Wayne Gretzky in career NHL points?

Jaromír Jágr moved into second place in December 2016, aged 44. He then went home to play for Kladno, the club he owns, and was still on the ice after his fiftieth birthday.