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Hašek was so effective in sending up the army and the Austro-Hungarian empire that Czechs still have a hard time taking authority seriously.

Leader of the Catholics during the Thirty Years’ War, Wallenstein (1581–1634) built a vast palace in Prague (see Wallenstein Palace).

As a drunken Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Tom Hulce staggered through Malá Strana’s narrow Thunovská alley in Miloš Forman’s Academy Award-winning 1984 interpretation of Peter Shaffer’s successful play. Prague was a well chosen location for the film, since Mozart’s Don Giovanni debuted at the Estates Theatre (see Stavovské divadlo), and Praguers are intensely proud of the association.

Dvořák’s works, such as his Slavonic Dances , regularly incorporate folk music. He composed his final symphony From the New World while he was director of the National Conservatory in New York City.

The Protestant nobility and the emperor continued to provoke each other until hostilities broke into open war. Imperial forces devastated the Czechs in the first battle of the Thirty Years’ War in 1620. Czech lands were re-Catholicized, but resentment against Vienna and Rome continued to smoulder.

The composer wrote his opera Libuše , based on the legendary princess, for the reopening of Prague’s National Theatre in 1883. Smetana vies with Antonin Dvořák for the title of best-loved Czech composer; the former’s ode to beer in The Bartered Bride gives him a certain advantage.

The poetic author used to sit in the Old Town pub U Zlatého tygra, taking down the stories he heard there. He died falling from his hospital-room window in 1997.

This pink stucco palace and the John Lennon Wall are separated by only a few steps, but they are miles apart aesthetically. However, the French Ambassador helped preserve the graffiti opposite his offices in the 1980s.