Vltava 2025 Exhibition

Exhibition VLTAVA Famed & Flowing

The exhibition Vltava Famed & Flowing is the main activity of the project of the same name, which is organised by the National Heritage Institute together with other partners in 2025 on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the first performance of Bedřich Smetana's symphonic poem Vltava. The exhibition will be available for viewing from September 5, 2025, to January 4, 2026 in the Prague Castle Riding School.

The basic idea of the exhibition works with three intertwining motifs:

  1. a reference to the original name of the river Wild Ahwa – wild/fierce/untamed water
  2. energy and the flow of the river, which manifest in various ways real, imaginary and symbolically
  3. the heart of the river/Vltava existing realistically, imaginatively and symbolically

„The word Vltava conjures up a flood of images, pictures and impressions. It recalls poems and resounds with music. It is the main river of Bohemia, it is their artery and flows through their heart, Prague. What would Bohemia be without the Vltava?“

Quote by František Kožík from the book Vltava from 1959

The exhibition is inspired by a quote by František Kožík and seeks to visualize the "flood of ideas, images and impressions" that the river evokes. In the exhibition scenario, this "flood" is directed into specific thematic units, but their boundaries are not completely fixed and intertwine.

Thematic units of the exhibition:

  • Heart of the Vltava
  • The formation of the river
  • Places on the river (important towns, villages and other locations on the Vltava)
  • Vltava gold and pearls (real panning and hunting, but also, and especially, a symbol of the economic and cultural wealth that the river represents)
  • Energy of the river (Vltava mills, sawmills, hammers, power plants, Vltava Cascade)
  • Transport on the river (voyage, boat transport) 
  • Life by the river (everyday life by the river, sports, tramping)   
  • Transport and technical works on the river 
  • Vltava fairy tales, myths and legends (vodník – a Slavic water spirit, rusalka – water nymph, Libuše, Horymír, St. John of Nepomuk, etc.)
  • Vltava emblematic

The three basic motifs of the exhibition are brought into a mutual connection and relationship to the content of the exhibition by the text of the panel, which will be situated in the opening part of the exhibition:

Sample of the opening panel of the exhibition

The name of the "main" Czech river Vltava is derived from the Old Germanic phrase Wilth Ahwa, meaning wild or raging (unbridled) water. The old swimmers called it the Black River and the tramps called it the Great River.

After centuries of modifications and regulation, the Vltava is now truly wild only in the short section of the Devil's Streams between Loučovice and Vyšší Brod. And only for a short time, when water managers lower the flaps of the Lipno dam and instead of turbines release masses of retained water into the old riverbed to please canoeists, rafters and romantic admirers of wild river scenery.

Then the flaps rise again, the current breaks, the giant boulders under the Devil's Wall quickly dry up and the calm surface of Lake Lipno looks as if it had nothing to do with the mass of water that was still churning in the old riverbed.

But it's just an appearance. The energy of the predatory water remains permanently present. We can imagine how deep below the surface of the lake flows the riverbed, which near Horní Plané turns into a meander, traditionally called the Heart of the Vltava. Symbolically and in the imagination and memories of river lovers, this heart continues to pulsate and stir the Vltava waters. True to its original name and despite the once confident plans of the builders of river regulation, they continue to flow or even repeatedly and threateningly rise from the banks and threaten the strength of concrete dams.

What's more, and above all! As the writer František Kožík aptly put it, they constantly and urgently evoke a flood of ideas, images and impressions, they remind us of poems and resound with music ...

This exhibition wants to be one big picture of such a flood and a testimony that the heart of the Vltava, and of all its admirers, beats on unwaveringly.

The exhibition is organized by the National Heritage Institute and the Administration of Prague Castle.