The Days of European Heritage will open over a thousand monuments

Prague - Over a thousand monuments across the country, nearly 800 of which are free, will open their doors to visitors as part of this year's European Heritage Days. The event will take place from September 6 to 14, with this year's national theme being Returns to Roots, and the opening will be in Opava on Friday. Next weekend will be dedicated to technical monuments and spa architecture.
    European Heritage Days is a Europe-wide event with a tradition of more than twenty years aimed at promoting historical heritage. Every year, it opens as many architectural, archaeological, and sacred monuments, museums, galleries, libraries, technical monuments, and militaria, as well as other spaces that preserve movable cultural heritage, as possible. In the Czech Republic, not only officially recognized cultural monuments are made accessible, but also dozens of private and public buildings that are usually not accessible at all or only occasionally and partially.
    As part of the national opening in Opava, a large painting by Anton Petter depicting the murder of Saint Wenceslas will be unveiled. After extensive restoration, the work will be hung in the local St. Wenceslas Church and displayed after many years during which it was stored in the depository of the Kroměříž Castle.
    The celebrations in Opava were combined by city representatives with the 790th anniversary of obtaining city rights. All 25 cultural monuments located in the city will be open, and city representatives would like to present their seat as a historic city - which is not how Opava is usually perceived.
    The main organizer of European Heritage Days in the country is the Association of Historical Sites of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. Since the first year, in which 300 monuments registered and 50,000 people came to visit them, attendance and the number of participating monuments have grown. In the last ten years, attendance has exceeded half a million people. Information about all accessible monuments can be found on the website www.historickasidla.cz.