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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

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.