Today we took a half day tour of Kutna Hora, a Unesco Heritage site located some 70 km out of the city. For the first time we joined an organised tour and had the benefit of a professional tourist guide to give a life commentary of the tour.
The Czech Republic came about after the fall of the previously communist country of Czechoslovakia. The communist state broke up into two independent states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The capital of Czech Republic is Prague and that of Slovakia is Bratislava. The Czech Republic is divided into two regions, Bohemia in the west with Prague as its capital and Moravia to the east with Brno as its capital.
Prague is an old city, currently with a population of 1.2 million people. The city is divided into 4 main districts, the Old Town, the New Town, the Lesser Town and the Hradcany where the Prague Castle complexes are located.
Prague was first established in the 8th century and ruled by its native population for a few hundred years until the royal family of Luxembourg took over followed by the Polish royal family and finally the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg royal finally. It was essentially a Catholic country, at one time the reformist Huss started an uprising resulting in the Hussite war between the Catholics and the Protestants. Today it is still a majority Catholic country ( 45 percent) with another 5 percent Protestants and 1 percent made up of the other denominations. Almost 50 percent of the population do not belong to any religious grouping.
Our drive to Kutna Hora first took the motorway towards Brno for about 20 km after which we turned into a country road for another 50 km. The rolling countryside was completely covered in white snow.....
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