Czechia

Czechia is made of three historic lands. Bohemia is a broad basin rimmed by mountains, with Sněžka, the highest peak, in the Krkonoše. The Vltava gathers its water in the Šumava forest and flows north through Prague to join the Elbe. Moravia, to the east, drains south through the Morava to the Danube, and its limestone karst hides caves and the deep Macocha sinkhole. Sandstone towers and arches line the Elbe gorge in Bohemian Switzerland.

Slav princes ruled here from the ninth century, and in 1348 Charles IV, king of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, founded the first university in Central Europe. Jan Hus was burned for heresy in 1415, and defeat at the White Mountain in 1620 brought three centuries of Habsburg rule. Czechoslovakia was founded in 1918. Nazi Germany seized it in 1938–39, Warsaw Pact tanks crushed the Prague Spring in August 1968, the Velvet Revolution of 1989 ended communist rule, and the Czech and Slovak republics parted peacefully in January 1993.

The first pale lager was brewed at Plzeň in 1842, and hops from around Žatec flavour beer far beyond the country. Sunday lunch might be svíčková, beef in a creamy vegetable sauce with bread dumplings. Dvořák and Janáček drew on folk music, Kafka and Hašek wrote in very different keys, and Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. introduced the word ‘robot’. Škoda builds cars at Mladá Boleslav, factories elsewhere make machinery and Bohemian glass, and Karlovy Vary bottles its spa water.