Prague Castle

Velvet Revolution icon and former Czech president Vaclav Havel, who died Sunday aged 75, was a playwright with a passion for sex, drugs, rock and roll and the politics of peace that singled him out among world leaders.

Thousands gathered in Prague's historic city centre on Wednesday as the Czech Republic began three days of national mourning to bid final farewell to Vaclav Havel, the icon of the 1989 Velvet Revolution.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Vaclav Havel's actress wife led mourners through the streets of Prague Wednesday, following the playwright-president's body on its last public journey, to the castle where it will lie in state until a funeral Friday.

Czechs paid homage Monday to celebrated anti-communist dissident and ex-president Vaclav Havel as officials declared three days of national mourning and set his funeral for Friday.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czechs streamed in their thousands through Prague Castle and the mediaeval city centre on Monday to write condolences and bid farewell to Vaclav Havel, the playwright-turned-president whose "Velvet Revolution" toppled Communist rule.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czechs streamed in their thousands through Prague Castle and the historical city centre on Monday to write condolences and bid farewell to Vaclav Havel, the playwright who became president after leading a "Velvet Revolution" to topple Communist rule.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Thousands of Czechs streamed through Prague Castle and the historical city centre on Monday to write condolences and bid farewell to Vaclav Havel, the playwright who became president after leading a "Velvet Revolution" to topple Communist rule.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Thousands of Czechs streamed through Prague Castle and the historical city centre on Monday to write condolences and bid farewell to Vaclav Havel, the playwright who became president after leading a "Velvet Revolution" to topple Communist rule.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czechs streamed in their thousands on Monday to write condolences and light candles in memory of Vaclav Havel, the playwright who became president after leading a "Velvet Revolution" to topple Communist rule.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Vaclav Havel, an anti-Communist playwright who became Czech president and a worldwide symbol of peace and freedom after leading the bloodless "Velvet Revolution," died at the age of 75 on Sunday.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Vaclav Havel, an anti-Communist playwright who became Czech president and a worldwide symbol of peace and freedom after leading the bloodless "Velvet Revolution," died at the age of 75 on Sunday.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Vaclav Havel, a dissident playwright jailed by Communists who became Czech president and a worldwide symbol of peace and freedom after leading the bloodless "Velvet Revolution," died at 75 on Sunday.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Vaclav Havel, a dissident playwright jailed by Communists who became Czech president and a worldwide symbol of peace and freedom after leading the bloodless "Velvet Revolution," died at 75 on Sunday.

Freedom icon and Czech ex-president Vaclav Havel, who steered his country peacefully to independence from Soviet rule, died aged 75 on Sunday, drawing a wave of tributes from around the globe.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Vaclav Havel, a dissident playwright jailed by Communists who became Czech president and a symbol of peace and freedom after leading the bloodless "Velvet Revolution," died at 75 on Sunday.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Vaclav Havel, a dissident playwright who was jailed by Communists and then went on to become Czech president and a symbol of peace and freedom after leading the bloodless "Velvet Revolution," died at age 75 on Sunday.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Iconic Czech poet Ivan Martin Jirous, whose quest for free expression under communism earned him nearly a decade in jail and helped inspire the 1989 "Velvet Revolution," died on Thursday at 67, his friends said.

WARSAW (Reuters) - Lech Walesa chuckles as he recounts a conversation he had in April with reformers in Tunisia, cradle of the Arab Spring.

A Prague festival will host the world premiere of Antonio Vivaldi's opera L'Unione della Pace, e di Marte, following its reconstruction by a Czech expert 284 years after its only performance.

Kveta Zrustova, 91, can clearly recall the spring day in 1938 when she entered a tiny house in Prague's famed Golden Lane to ask advice from the fortune teller Madame de Thebes.