Ottovy Čechy včera a dnes

CzechTourism Slovakia invites you to an exhibition of period landscape paintings created between 1883 and 1908 for the legendary Ottův slovník naucný. The exhibition panels from the Science Library in Olomouc will be supplemented with photographs of the current state of the sites from the Český Krumlov publishing house MCU.

The exhibition was created as a supplement to the publication of the Science Library in Olomouc called Ottovy Bohemia. A picture of the country in the years 1883 - 1908, which offers on 380 pages with more than 800 period images the most interesting things from traveling through Bohemia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The authors, Petra Kubíčková and Lubomír Novotný, were interested in how the contemporary authors of the original narrative cycle perceived the landscape around them - as if through the eyes of a historian, a romantic wanderer, a fighter for the national cause or through the eyes of a naturalist, whether they were primarily looking at natural creations while traveling through the landscape or were interested in people, or architectural monuments or industry.

The exhibition Otto's Bohemia Yesterday and Today brings to light the period when Francis Joseph I was the Czech king and Czechs and Germans lived together and side by side in the Czech meadows and groves, when Karel Havlíček lived and the ongoing industrialization dramatically changed the landscape. At the same time, it will provide a contemporary view of selected historical buildings to compare the differences in their shapes and condition in the space of more than a century.