Strážnice, Czech Republic, by motorhome
Strážnice is well and truly off the tourist map but once you visit there you will wonder why as there is so much to see. In the days when it was part of the Austro Hungarian Empire, it was also called Straßnitz and is located in the south east corner of the Czech Republic. Around six thousand people live there.
Strážnice Castle, which you can see in the photographs and film, was founded in the second half of the 13th century, but it was later rebuilt in Renaissance style. It was located here as a defence on the Moravia river - we can also see defences as we enter the town from the south which date from the sixteenth century. The castle houses the National Institute of Folk Culture which includes an exhibition of musical instruments and the library. The castle park is extensive and includes the longest plane alley in Central Europe. The park dates to the first half of the 19th century. Amphitheatres, a summer cinema, lakes, a dendrology path with educational boards and many benches are located in the park.
The Jewish cemetery in Sadova street holds about 1100 gravestones, the oldest ones dating back to 17th century. The synagogue rebuilt in early 20th century was renovated in 2008 and holds now a museum. Most of the Strážnice Jews were deported to their deaths in the Holocaust but many of the houses in the old ghetto still stand.
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Principality of Moravia | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
00:04:59 1 Name
00:05:08 1.1 Great Moravia
00:07:43 1.2 Etymology
00:08:39 2 Territory
00:11:46 2.1 Traditional view
00:14:42 2.2 Further theories
00:16:42 3 History
00:16:51 3.1 Origins (before c. 800)
00:21:38 3.2 Development of Moravia (c. 800–846)
00:28:16 3.3 Fights for independence (846–870)
00:35:21 3.4 Svätopluk's reign (870–894)
00:44:36 3.5 Decline and fall (894–before 907)
00:49:45 4 State and society
00:49:55 4.1 Sources
00:51:06 4.2 Settlement structure
00:57:41 4.3 Monarchs
00:58:51 4.4 Administration
01:01:33 4.5 Warfare
01:05:28 4.6 Aristocracy
01:06:42 4.7 Population
01:09:31 5 Economy
01:12:44 6 Culture
01:12:53 6.1 Sacral architecture
01:16:50 6.2 Religion
01:20:15 6.3 Literature
01:23:44 6.4 Arts
01:24:43 7 Legacy
01:30:09 8 See also
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SUMMARY
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Great Moravia (Latin: Regnum Marahensium; Greek: Μεγάλη Μοραβία, Megálī Moravía; Czech: Velká Morava [ˈvɛlkaː ˈmorava]; Slovak: Veľká Morava [ˈʋɛʎkaː ˈmɔraʋa]; Polish: Wielkie Morawy), the Great Moravian Empire, or simply Moravia, was the first major state that was predominantly West Slavic to emerge in the area of Central Europe, chiefly on what is now the territory of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland (including Silesia), and Hungary. The only formation preceding it in these territories was Samo's Empire known from between 631 and 658 AD. Great Moravia was thus the first joint state of the Slavonic tribes that became later known as Czechs and Slovaks and that later formed Czechoslovakia.
Its core territory is the region now called Moravia in the eastern part of the Czech Republic alongside the Morava River, which gave its name to the kingdom. The kingdom saw the rise of the first ever Slavic literary culture in the Old Church Slavonic language as well as the expansion of Christianity after the arrival of St. Cyril and St. Methodius in 863 and the creation of the Glagolitic alphabet, the first alphabet dedicated to a Slavonic language, which had significant impact on most Slavic languages and stood at the beginning of the modern Cyrillic alphabet.
Moravia reached its largest territorial extent under the king Svätopluk I, (Svatopluk in Czech), who ruled from 870 to 894. Although the borders of his empire cannot be exactly determined, he controlled the core territories of Moravia as well as other neighbouring regions, including Bohemia, most of Slovakia and parts of Slovenia, Hungary, Poland and Ukraine, for some periods of his reign. Separatism and internal conflicts emerging after Svätopluk's death contributed to the fall of Great Moravia, which was overrun by the Hungarians who then included the territory of the now Slovakia in their domains. The exact date of Moravia's collapse is unknown, but it occurred between 902 and 907.
Moravia experienced significant cultural development under King Rastislav, with the arrival in 863 of the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius. After his request for missionaries had been refused in Rome, Rastislav asked the Byzantine emperor to send a teacher (učitelja) to introduce literacy and a legal system (pravьda) to Great Moravia. The request was granted. The missionary brothers Cyril and Methodius introduced a system of writing (the Glagolitic alphabet) and Slavonic liturgy, the latter eventually formally approved by Pope Adrian II. The Glagolitic script was probably invented by Cyril himself and the language he used for his translations of holy scripts and his original literary creation was based on the Slavic dialect he and his brother Methodius knew from their native Thessaloniki. The language, termed Old Church Slavonic, was the direct ancestral language for Bulgarian, and therefore also referred to as Old Bulgarian. Old Church Slavonic, ...