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Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, the Ministry of Culture will designate seven sites as ‘national cultural monuments’. All of them are tied to the Czech nation’s struggle to secure freedom or rid itself of Nazi or Soviet oppression. Among them is the Czech Radio building in Prague, a focal point of resistance both in 1968 and at the close of WWII.

Foreign language broadcasts generally have a long tradition and each international service has its own “voice”. Here is what Radio Prague International and its partner stations sound like –by their own definition.

The winners of Czech Radio’s annual poll for Best Actor/Actress on the Airwaves are Taťjana Medvecká and Ivan Trojan.

Taťjana Medvecká picked up the listeners‘ award for the seventh time in succession as the most popular female actress on the airwaves. The listeners‘ poll has a 23-year-long tradition.

Thirty-three actors and actresses were in the running this year and close to 1,600 listeners took part in the poll.

Sport has always played a big role in Czech life. At the time of the national revival in the 19th century, the Sokol gymnastics movement was founded on the idea that a healthy body was a recipe not only for a healthy mind, but also for a civilised nation. In this episode of our series drawing from the archives, we hear recordings from the huge Sokol gathering of 1938 and from the Spartakiáda displays of mass callisthenics that replaced Sokol during the communist period. We also feature an ice hockey report from the Olympics in 1936, as well as Europe’s

One of Czech Radio’s leading charity projects is in aid of the blind and visually impaired. Established in 2003, Světluška, or Firefly, annually collects around 15 million crowns to be distributed among people with impaired eyesight, not just to help them cope, but to enjoy life to the full. At the same time it raises public awareness of the problem giving the sighted a chance to find out what it is like to manage daily activities without this key sense.

From September you will find our programme under a new name, Radio Prague International. This is our team that prepares broadcasts, reports and news for you.

For 83 years now listeners of Czech Radio’s external service broadcasts have been accustomed to hearing our specific call-sign. Both the call sign and the station’s name have changed over the years. Another small change is now in the pipeline. As of September 1, Radio Prague will become Radio Prague International. Use our audio slider for a walk down memory lane…

The Czech Radio building in Prague saw the most intense violence during the Soviet-led invasion of August 21, 1968 and, as every year, hundreds of people marked the anniversary at the station on Thursday. Among them were leading politicians – and one old lady who broadcast news of the occupation to the outside world.

Paris, Lviv and Prague, over a thousand miles apart yet connected by the fact that they all initiated successful uprisings against their German occupiers during World War II. The Czech capital was the last of the three to do so, but the action arguably preserved the city’s beauty and led to a battle the Czech nation, previously starved of an opportunity to fight, needed. On the date famously named by Winston Churchill as Victory in Europe day, we take the opportunity to explore the story behind the Prague Uprising.

Eighty years ago today, on March 15 1939, Hitler gave Czechoslovak President Emil Hácha a stark choice: accept becoming a protectorate or face destruction. After Hácha reluctantly agreed to give up his country’s independence the German army started moving in. It was the beginning of six long years of occupation.