These cultural practices are candidates for inscription on the Living Heritage List of the Hradec Králové Region. Sign up for the ones you actively live, remember or cheer for.
This is not a poll or a petition. Your sign-up shows the committee that the practice has a living community around it: how many people practise it, how many remember it and who cares about it. It is not about collecting votes. If only a handful of the last rememberers sign up for a practice, that is not a defeat but an important signal: the practice can be inscribed as endangered and receive special care before it disappears.
Choose a practice with the button right next to it, then complete your sign-up with the short form at the bottom of the page.
Mountain hut life (budaření)
If anything makes the history of the Giant Mountains unique, it is the solitary human dwellings high up in the mountains. The original summer shielings, where farmers drove their cattle for summer…
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Bunker keeping
Thanks to its location, a significant part of the Hradec Králové Region consists of border areas which were equipped before the Second World War with a unique system of concrete frontier fortifications.…
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Brass bands
The history of brass ensembles in the Hradec Králové Region reaches back to the second half of the 19th century. Kolet's Miners' Band, a brass orchestra based in Rtyně v Podkrkonoší and…
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Girls' Easter carolling on Palm Sunday (chodění s lítem)
According to available sources, the tradition of girls' Easter carolling is at least a hundred years old. It is one of the distinctive customs of the Podorlicko area, kept above all around…
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Festivals
The Hradec Králové Region is among the regions with a comparatively high number of festivals; several dozen take place every year. Music and theatre festivals are the most numerous. One of the…
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Rock climbing
Sometime around the turn of the 20th century climbers began to discover the rock towns of the region. The local rocks played a key role not only in the birth of the…
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Mountain rescue service
The mountain rescue service came into being in the Giant Mountains during the 20th century. Mountain rescuers must have thorough knowledge of the weather, orientation and nature to take care of people…
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Mushroom picking
The Czechs owe their passion for going to the woods for mushrooms largely to František Smotlacha, a native of Hradec Králové, who founded the Czech Mycological Society in the 1920s and tested…
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St Hubert's Ride
St Hubert's Ride is the official event that closes the competitive riding season every year and pays tribute to St Hubert, patron of riders and hunters. Over time it ceased to be…
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Jirásek's Hronov festival
Jirásek's Hronov is an international festival of amateur theatre in Hronov which carries on the town's long amateur-theatre tradition begun by Antonín Knahl, founder of the local theatre society, in 1826. Established…
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Stone sculpture
At the beginning of the 20th century Hořice held the Czech monopoly on secondary education in sculpture, and one can study there to this day. The region's long stone-carving tradition laid the…
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Military history clubs
The Hradec Králové Region has a rich military history, shaped above all by the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and by the Czechoslovak fortifications built mainly between 1934 and 1938, kept alive today…
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Giant Mountains herbalism
The mountain people knew the colourful botanical gardens high in the mountains long before the first researchers discovered and studied them. Such places were often visited by numerous herbalists and root gatherers…
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Kvíčerov fair
The traditional Kvíčerov fair has been held regularly in Police nad Metují since the nineteenth century. From 1835 it was attended by the well-known historian and archivist Václav Vladivoj Tomek. The fair…
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Shrovetide carnival in Machovská Lhota
This border area has strong ties to several Czech villages on the Polish side, from which Czechs were resettled after the war. It is here that the Shrovetide carnival tradition is kept…
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International Mountaineering Film Festival
The International Mountaineering Film Festival was founded in 1981 by the climber and photographer Miroslav Šmíd. It takes place in Teplice nad Metují in the Náchod district; the entered films, by professionals…
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Miletín "little prayers" gingerbread
The Miletín "little prayer" is a decorated gingerbread sweet named after the town of Miletín and tied to the Erben family. The gingerbread maker Erben first offered them at the traditional Miletín…
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Organised small-animal breeding
Organised small-animal breeding, practised by ordinary people brought together in breeders' societies, has been developing since roughly the end of the 19th century. Besides their educational and organisational role, the societies have…
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Cold-water swimming
Cold-water swimming was popularised in this country by Alfred Nikodém, a member of the rescue team that watched over the frozen Vltava in winter while locals skated on it. The practice began…
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Pavlišov schnitzel
Many stories of origin are attached to this speciality, found around Náchod and reaching into the Úpice area. The "bunker" one is linked to the 1930s and the construction of the frontier…
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Remembrance tradition of the 1866 Hradec Králové battlefield
The heritage zone of the 1866 Hradec Králové battlefield today comprises some 500 works of funerary sculpture and architecture. A key moment in the remembrance tradition was the founding of the Committee,…
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Gemstone cutting in the Krkonoše foothills
Since prehistory people in the Krkonoše foothills used local quartz as a substitute for flint in making various tools. Gemstones began to be collected and worked on a larger scale only in…
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Radio-controlled modelling
Organised modelling in Hradec Králové dates back to the interwar period, when aircraft modellers took part in the Masaryk Aviation League. Today the tradition is carried on by, for example, MODELKLUB Hradec…
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Tongue-in-cheek events and races
In the small towns and villages of the Hradec Králové Region a whole range of usually tongue-in-cheek events arose spontaneously, serving mainly for amusement but often also as a hidden expression of…
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The rivalry between Hradec Králové and Pardubice
Hradec Kralové, Pardubice
The rivalry emerged as early as the beginning of the 16th century with the arrival of the Pernštejn family to the Pardubice estate. It gained new momentum in the era of the…
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Choral singing
The oldest choirs were founded in the second half of the 19th century. Choral singing thus has a long tradition in the Hradec Králové Region, and dozens of choirs are active here…
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Farmers' mounted societies
The farmers' mounted societies arose in the mid-19th century as an expression of patriotic emancipation efforts in the countryside. Some of the strongest of these riding societies formed in the Krkonoše foothills;…
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Historical fencing societies
The beginnings of historical fencing in the Czech lands can be traced roughly to the 1950s, when a group of sport fencers began rehearsing sword fights in period costumes for theatres and…
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The Sobotka "zahrádka"
The town of Sobotka is known not only as the gateway to Bohemian Paradise but also as the place tied to the making and annual preparation of the traditional Sobotka Christmas folk…
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Raising the maypole
Raising the maypole was celebrated above all as a symbol of love, fertility and youth. Traditionally the men set out into the woods on the last day of April to cut the…
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The rooster beheading custom in Příchvoj
Every year Příchvoj commemorates the custom of the rooster beheading, known since pagan times. This feast-day custom has survived here, with short interruptions, to the present day; the rooster represented evil.
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The students' merenda festivity
The students' merenda is a traditional two-day student festivity that arose in Nový Bydžov in the 1740s. It was held at the end of the summer holidays as the students' farewell before…
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Ballroom dancing courses
Dancing courses have shaped whole generations for more than 150 years. Since the 19th century dance has been taught in group courses open to the general public, introducing participants not only to…
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Textile manufacturing
Once a vital industry for the Náchod area. Today only the VEBA company remains; its history carries on the rich tradition of textile production in the Broumov region reaching back to the…
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Sandstone quarrying and working
The oldest records of stone quarrying near Božanov and in the Krákorka quarry date from the 13th century. Sandstone quarrying gradually ceased during the Second World War and stopped after the expulsion…
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Traditions of the noble families
A phenomenon of the Podorlicko area are its aristocratic seats standing near the region's largest river. The châteaux on the Orlice are unique above all in that all of them remain in…
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Tramping in the Broumov region
The particular origins of tramping in the Broumov region (the Broumov Walls and the Adršpach-Teplice Rocks) are tied to the period after the Second World War, when settlements hidden in the rocks…
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Long-distance walking marches
In the mid-1960s long-distance marches began to arise spontaneously in the Czech lands; they later became popular and gradually expanded to include shorter, recreational forms. A march under 50 kilometres counts as…
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Veneration of springs
The folk, essentially unorganised phenomenon of visiting wells and springs, bringing holy pictures or simply pausing on hiking trails, is still a living tradition in the region. Among the most important pilgrimage…
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Christmas ornaments
Christmas ornaments belong inseparably not only to Christmas but also to the region. The tradition of blown glass in the Krkonoše foothills was introduced in the second half of the 19th century…
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Car manufacturing
The region, and the Rychnov area in particular, was and remains an important centre of car manufacturing. The 1950s gave rise to the legendary Velorex; today car making is linked above all…
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Woodworking machinery manufacturing
The Rojek company, based in Kostelec nad Orlicí, has a manufacturing tradition of more than a hundred years. Its founder Josef Rojek prospered with quality woodworking machines of his own design even…
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Clock and watch making
The history of PRIM watches from Nové Město nad Metují goes back to 1949, when the local factory began specialising in mechanical wristwatches. Some mechanical watches with movements of the maker's own…
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Musical instrument making
Hradec Králové is a town famous for musical instruments. Three important firms that entered the history of music have been active here for over a hundred years; the instrument factory was founded…
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Metal toy making
The making of metal toys has been concentrated in the Podorlicko area since the beginning of the 20th century. From the original home producers, metalworkers and locksmiths an industrial production gradually developed,…
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Hand mill manufacturing
With the industrial revolution the Rychnov area became an important centre of engineering in East Bohemia. Enterprising industrialists and visionaries founded a strong engineering tradition here that is alive to this day.
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Lock making
In 1911 the Rychnov entrepreneurs Alois Fáborský and František Šeda founded a lock-making firm which operates here to this day under the name FAB. Every FAB product carries the symbol of a…
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Agricultural machinery manufacturing
At the end of the nineteenth century the brothers Antonín and František Knotek founded a store of farming machines in Jičín, which they gradually expanded until they began making agricultural machinery themselves,…
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Allotment garden colonies
Historically the allotment colonies were an important source of food for poorer people, above all in wartime, but they also arose as a response of city dwellers who needed the fulfilment of…
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Winter camping on Ostaš and Hvězda
This tradition of winter camping was founded more than half a century ago by hikers from Broumov, who from 1964 set out together for winter camps on Ostaš, where the first fourteen…
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Can you think of more living heritage?
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