National Monument at Vítkov

This guide to the National Monument at Vítkov in Prague centers on Klement Gottwald, Czechoslovakia's first communist president, whose embalmed body was raised out of the floor here each morning for mourners to view after his death in March 1953, days after he stood in Moscow at Stalin's funeral. You'll hear how the monument was originally built for entirely different men, the volunteer soldiers of the First World War, and how doctors worked to keep his corpse presentable. Look up at the colossal bronze rider crowning the hill, the medieval general Jan Žižka, unveiled the same year the mausoleum opened.