Wenceslas Square

This guide to Wenceslas Square in Prague opens with Jan Palach, a twenty-year-old history student who climbed this slope on January 16, 1969, poured liquid over his clothes, and struck a match to protest the Soviet-led invasion that had crushed Czechoslovakia's brief freedom. It follows his funeral, the largest protest Prague had seen under occupation, and the small bronze cross that still marks where he fell. Two decades later, crowds gathered on this same spot again for what became known as Palach Week, a set of memorial protests broken up by police.