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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

For today's Spotlight we have come to the countryside of west Bohemia to visit Kozel Chateau. Kozel was originally a hunting lodge, and when it was built in the late 18th century bore the German name Waldschloss or Jadgschloss, meaning Forest or Hunting Chateau. Why is it now called Kozel (Goat in Czech)? Apparently, the ancient Slavs used to sacrifice a goat on this site at the spring equinox. Their aim: to win the favour of their pagan gods and, hopefully, a good harvest.

In this week's Spotlight, we visit the little town of Jilove, some 20 kilometres south of Prague, along the lower Sazava River. Despite being a small town with a population of a little under 3,500, Jilove is known to most Czechs because it was a gold-mining town until as recently as 1968. Throughout its gold-mining history, over eleven tonnes of the precious metal were extracted in the region.

In today's Spotlight we get off the beaten path and visit a castle rarely listed among more dominant tourist sites. All the same Kamen - literally rock or stone - is worthy of a visit, especially if you ever find yourself travelling between the south Bohemian towns of Tabor and the gate to the Moravian highlands known as the town of Pelhrimov. Kamen, built on a massive rock promontory, is a most dominant feature of the local landscape, a reference point as well as a destination for both drivers and the increasing number of mountain bikers who have

For this week's Spotlight we travel to East Bohemia, to a small but very old town called Opocno, not far from the Polish border.

This week, we'll be visiting the town of Jihlava, which is located at the very border of Bohemia and Moravia, dividing the eastern and western parts of the Czech Republic. In fact, no-one knows which of the two regions it belongs to and town residents agree that it spreads over both of them. Jihlava has a population of 53,000 and its earliest written record dates back to the 12th century when it was founded thanks to the discovery of silver.

Castolovice is a little town with a beautiful rennaissance castle situated in flat wooded countryside in East Bohemia about 20km from the town of Hradec Kralove. The special atmosphere of the place strikes you straight away as you walk through the castle gate.

Southeast Bohemia's Landstejn Castle found south-east of Jindrichuv Hradec, close to the Czech - Moravian - Austrian border, remains one of the Czech Republic's most imposing structures. The famous Romanesque ruin, originally designed to protect Bohemia's frontiers as well as to guard an ancient trade route to Austria, was built in the early 13th century.

In this week's Spotlight, we visit the Ondrejov Observatory 35km south-east of Prague, where some 50 scientists are busy solving the mysteries of the universe. The observatory has been part of the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic since 1953 and houses the biggest telescope in Central Europe. It's open to the public every weekend in the summer from 9 a.m.

The development of stone castles was significant in the thirteenth century Bohemia - in what is today the Czech Republic. The Castle of Cesky Sternberk is a classic example: it is a long string of early gothic buildings and is wonderfully situated in the scenic countryside of Central Bohemia, southeast of Prague. It is also extremely unusual in that through the centuries it has been under the almost continuous ownership of the Sternberk family. The castle embodies eight centuries of Czech history and for me what brought to life early historical