The Velvet Revolution walk
In the footsteps of the students and the crowds of November 1989, from the river and the National Theatre, up Národní Street and Wenceslas Square.
6 stops, about 30 minutes of walking, about 2 km. About one hour. Best in the daytime; a quiet and serious walk.
1 National Theatre. Where the march came
Nové Město (New Town) · Czech name: Národní divadlo
On Friday the seventeenth of November 1989, about fifteen thousand students walked along the river from Vyšehrad. They carried candles and flowers, to remember Jan Opletal, a student killed by the Nazis fifty years earlier. The plan was to walk to Wenceslas Square, but the crowd followed the embankment as far as the National Theatre, and there turned into Národní Street. A few weeks later, the National Theatre's little stage next door, the Laterna Magika, would become the headquarters of the revolution.
2 Národní Street. The cordon
Nové Město (New Town)
At about seven thirty in the evening, at this spot, the crowd was stopped by a line of riot police, who blocked the street. Behind the students, more police closed the street from the other direction. The students sat on the road, held up their empty hands and chanted, we have bare hands. They gave flowers to the police. Then the police attacked with batons, and many were injured. Rumours spread that a student had died, and though this proved false, it raised the anger of the whole city.
3 Platýz Courtyard. The escape
Additional sites worth the detour · Czech name: Palác Platýz
Many students fled through the passages of this block. Some found shelter in the courtyards, and in the stairways, where residents opened their doors to the wounded. People hid students from the police, and gave them first aid. In the following days, a memorial of bronze hands was placed on the wall of the house at Národní sixteen. People still light candles there. The brutality of that evening was the spark. Within a week, the whole country was in the streets.
4 Lucerna Passage
Nové Město (New Town) · Czech name: Palác Lucerna
Through Lucerna, we reach Wenceslas Square. For many years, the Lucerna was a centre of Prague's culture, owned by the family of Václav Havel. In the days after the seventeenth of November, theatres closed, actors and students went on strike, and every evening people gathered in the nearby streets. On the nineteenth, at the Činoherní klub, a small theatre, Havel and his friends formed the Civic Forum, the movement that negotiated the end of the regime.
5 Wenceslas Square. The crowds
Nové Město (New Town) · Czech name: Pomník svatého Václava
From the twentieth of November, the square filled with more and more people, one hundred thousand, then two hundred thousand, even more. They jingled their keys to say, it is time for you to go. On the twenty fourth of November, Václav Havel and Alexander Dubček, the hero of 1968, appeared together on the balcony of the Melantrich building, and the crowd roared. A few days later, the communist leadership resigned. The revolution was called velvet, because it passed with almost no violence.
6 National Museum. The end of the walk
Nové Město (New Town) · Czech name: Národní muzeum
We end at the top of the square, in front of the National Museum, where in 1968 the Soviet tanks had come, and where in 1969 Jan Palach had died. Twenty years later, in November 1989, this was the place where the Czechs and Slovaks took back their country. On the twenty ninth of December, Václav Havel was elected president. In 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully split into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This walk was about a few weeks, but their story began with many years of quiet courage.
Walk this route with Prago
Prago is an audio guide to Prague for iPhone. The map is on the phone, so it works with no signal and no roaming bill, and it starts talking when you walk up to a place. There is no account and no tracking. Coming soon to the App Store.
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