WENCESLAS SQUARE
Wenceslas Square in Prague is a vibrant area of hotels, apartments, restaurants, bars, clubs and shops. One of two main squares in central Prague (the other is the Old Town Square, 5 minutes walk away), Wenceslas Square (Vaclavske Namesti) is a very popular place to stay. Visitors are drawn to the entertainment and nightlife all around, plus the International shops which make this Prague's main shopping area.
Wenceslas Square also offers easy access to all the Prague sights and attractions. From here it is possible to walk anywhere in the city centre.
The 750m long and 60m wide boulevard that makes up Wenceslas Square was laid out over 600 years ago during the reign of Charles IV. It was originally used as the main Prague horse market.
Jan Palach (August 11, 1948 Prague – January 19, 1969 Prague; Czech pronunciation: [ˈjan ˈpalax]) was a Czech student who committed suicide by self-immolation as a political protest. The Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 was designed to crush the liberalising reforms of Alexander Dubček's government during the Prague Spring. Palach died after setting himself on fire in Wenceslas Square in Prague, Czechoslovakia on 16 January 1969 in protest. He was the first of a group of students to sign a suicide pact, but most of the others did not go through with their part, after the well-publicised pleas Palach made on his deathbed about the degree of pain they faced.
The funeral of Palach turned into a major protest against the occupation, and a month later (on February 25, 1969) another student, Jan Zajíc, burned himself to death in the same place, followed in April of the same year by Evžen Plocek in Jihlava.n
Palach was initially interred in Olšany Cemetery. As his gravesite was growing into a national shrine, the Czechoslovak secret police (StB) set out to destroy any memory of Palach's deed and exhumed his remains on the night of October 25, 1973. His body was then cremated and sent to his mother in Palach's native town of Všetaty while an anonymous old woman from a rest home was laid in the grave. Palach's mother was not allowed to deposit the urn in the local cemetery until 1974. On October 25, 1990 the urn was officially returned to its initial site in Prague.
On the 20th anniversary of Palach's death, protests ostensibly in memory of Palach (but intended as criticism of the regime) escalated into what would be called "Palach Week". The series of anticommunist demonstrations in Prague between 15 and 21 January 1989 were suppressed by the police, who beat demonstrators and used water cannons, often catching passers-by in the fray. Palach Week is considered one of the catalyst demonstrations which preceded the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia 11 months later.
After the Velvet Revolution, Palach (along with Zajíc) was commemorated in Prague by a bronze cross embedded at the spot where he fell outside the National Museum, as well as a square named in his honour. The Czech astronomer Luboš Kohoutek, who left Czechoslovakia the following year, named an asteroid which had been discovered on August 22, 1969, after Jan Palach (1834 Palach). There are several other memorials to Palach in cities throughout Europe, including a small memorial inside the glacier tunnels beneath the Jungfraujoch in Switzerland.
One of few photographs of the Czech hero.
Several later incidents of self-immolation may have been influenced by the example of Palach and his media popularity. In the spring of 2003, a total of six young Czechs burned themselves to death, notably the secondary school student Zdeněk Adamec. He burned himself on 6 March 2003 on almost the same spot in front of the National Museum, leaving a suicide note explicitly referring to Palach and the others who had committed suicide in 1969.
Just walking distance from the site of Palach's self-immolation, a statuary in Prague's Old Town Square honours iconic Bohemian religious thinker Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake for his beliefs in 1415. Himself celebrated as a national hero for many centuries, some commentary has linked Palach's self-immolation to the execution of Hus.
