Why go
Prague Castle links the new republic with the occupation that followed; Josefov and the Pinkas Synagogue confront the destruction of Jewish life. Wenceslas Square and Letná then help place the city's postwar and 1989 history in real streets. Each asks for a different kind of attention.
The full story
After the First World War, Prague became the capital of Czechoslovakia, with Prague Castle serving as the presidential seat. That new state was broken by Nazi occupation in 1939. Prague's Jewish population was deported and largely murdered; the memorial at Pinkas Synagogue gives names to people lost from Czech and Moravian communities. The city also saw resistance, including the 1942 attack on Reinhard Heydrich, followed by severe Nazi reprisals. After the war, many German residents fled or were expelled. Communist rule then tied Czechoslovakia to the Soviet bloc. The Prague Spring reforms of 1968 were crushed by a Warsaw Pact invasion, and Jan Palach later set himself alight in protest. On Letná hill, the former Stalin monument site shows how official memory changed. In 1989, demonstrations in Prague helped bring about the Velvet Revolution. The city's twentieth century is best approached through these specific places and people, rather than as a smooth march toward the present.