Why go
Police suppression of a Prague student demonstration on 17 November 1989 helped trigger growing protests and a general strike. Communist leaders gave up their monopoly on power, and Václav Havel became president in December. The peaceful 1993 split with Slovakia marks a separate step: democracy returned while Czechoslovakia still existed.
The full story
The Velvet Revolution began after police suppressed a student demonstration in Prague on 17 November 1989. The response grew into mass protests and a general strike, drawing students, dissidents and many other citizens into a peaceful challenge to one-party rule. By late November the Communist Party had agreed to give up its monopoly on power. Václav Havel became president of Czechoslovakia in December, before the country held new democratic elections. The name Velvet Revolution refers to that nonviolent political transition, not to the later change in national borders. Czech and Slovak leaders separated their republics peacefully on 1 January 1993. For visitors, this distinction matters when interpreting Prague's protest sites and the names used on twentieth-century memorials. The people in the streets in 1989 were changing the government of Czechoslovakia; the Czech Republic became an independent state four years later. These events are linked, but they answer different historical questions.