Anniversary: The Velvet Revolution Begins — November 17, 1989

On 17 November 1989, riot police broke up a peaceful student march on Národní třída, the street leading to Prague’s National Theatre, beating demonstrators who had come out to mark International Students’ Day. The violence, instead of ending the protests, started them: within weeks the Communist government had resigned. The theatre at the end of that street had spent a century as the stage of Czech national identity; that November it watched the street itself become one.