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Pernstejn Castle is some 35km north-west of the south Moravian city of Brno. Standing on a rocky hill above the villages of Pernstejn and Nedvedice, it overlooks the highlands of Bohemia and Moravia. It was built in the second half of the 13th century and is one of the best-preserved castles in the country today, attracting some 75,000 visitors a year.

For today's spotlight, and with the coming of spring firmly in mind, I hopped onto the 112 bus and headed for Prague's Botanical Gardens. Prague has the unusual accolade of having two sets of Botanical Gardens. I focused my journalistic powers on those in Prague 7, right beside the zoo. The Gardens' spokesperson, Marcela Uhlikova, showed me around. We started in the outdoor enclosure, dodging the convoys of tractors, diggers and ploughs.

The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto is one of North America's finest, home to 600, 000 books including an unmatched collection of Czechoslovak underground writing that was banned under the Communist regime. Join Jan Velinger and his guide now - Canadian librarian of Slovak descent, Luba Frastacky, in a tour of the fascinating building and its extensive stacks.

Today's Spotlight is part of a new series of stories and reports about Czechs in Canada airing on Radio Prague throughout the month of March. In this edition Jan Velinger takes us to the exciting Bata Shoe Museum right in the centre of Toronto. Among his guests: the founder of the museum itself Sonja Bata, wife of famous Czech-born businessman Tomas Bata, whose shoes are recognised world-wide.

With its sloping cobbled streets, beautiful baroque churches and an abundance of historical architecture, Olomouc is easily one of the most appealing cities in the Czech Republic outside of Prague. Typically, this bustling university town in North Moravia owes much of its architectural splendour to its long and somewhat chequered past. Some claim that this ancient city dates back as far as Roman times, when it was reputed to have been founded by Julius Caesar himself.

In today's Spotlight, we take a tour of the Small Fortress of Terezin in North Bohemia, which - together with the Large Fortress, a kilometre away - was built to defend Bohemia against the Prussian Army. But the fortresses were never used in battle and the Small Fortress was used as an army prison and a prison for political prisoners. However, it is mainly known from the period from 1940-1945, when it was a Nazi German Gestapo prison.

In this edition of Spotlight we visit the Czech Republic's biggest spa town, Karlovy Vary. Besides the town's spa tradition, which goes back some 600 years at least, Karlovy Vary can also boast a good mix of architectural styles ranging from the Baroque to Art Nouveau. It is also home to the famous manufacturer of Bohemian glass Moser, the delicious Carlsbad wafers, and of course the popular Becherovka liquor. The 54,000 residents certainly have much to be proud of.

The Czechs of Romania mainly inhabit the Banat region in the south of the country, along the River Danube. There are an estimated 2,000 of them living in six ethnically Czech villages: Svata Helena, Gernik, Rovensko, Bigr, Eibental and Sumice. In many ways their lives have been untouched by the modern world.

In this edition of Spotlight we take you to the east Bohemian town of Pardubice, the site of one of the most imposing Gothic and Renaissance Castles in the Czech lands, with roots that go back to the 13th century. We met with Josef Fischkandl, who has been guiding at Pardubice Castle for years and knows the site better than almost anyone else. He'll be our guide for today.

Today we visit a small town in North Bohemia that many of you are already familiar with. Some 30,000 tourists visit Terezin every year. The town is mainly associated with the horrors of the Holocaust, when the Nazis turned it into a ghetto for tens of thousands of Jews from across Europe. Given this grim legacy, it is ironic that Terezin is also one of the more interesting and unusual historic Czech towns, much studied by architectural historians and town planners. It has one of the oldest and best preserved Baroque defence systems in Europe. For