Havel's ashes likely buried next year

Prague, Dec 27 (CTK) - The urn with the ashes of the former Czechoslovak and Czech president Vaclav Havel will probably not be buried in the following days and it might be laid in the family tomb at the Prague-Vinohrady cemetery after the New Year's Day, according to CTK information.

Neither the Havel family nor his office has announced the date yet.

Havel, former dissident, playwright and the last Czechoslovak and the first Czech president (1989-2003), died in his country house in Hradecek, east Bohemia, on December 18 aged 75 years.

This morning, the cemetery workers cleaned, tidied up and washed the tombstone covered with hundreds of candles and flowers that people were bringing to his family tomb in the past days.

The name of the former president is not yet engraved on the tombstone.

Havel wished to be buried in the family tomb where his parents and his first wife Olga rest in peace.

After her death in 1996 Havel asked architect Zdenek Hoelzel and sculptor Olbram Zoubek to rebuild the tomb. He wanted to have enough space for other deceased family members on the tombstone, Havel explained in his book Briefly, Please (2006).

He also indicated how he would imagine his own tombstone.

"I do not want any special inscription, any title or position either. Only the name and the dates of birth and death as in the case of the others," Havel wrote.

Havel did not wish any state symbols on his grave, Hoelzel said.

Yet the authors of the reconstruction reckoned with the first post-communist president resting in the tomb once, Hoelzel told public Czech Television (CT) yesterday.

This is why he chose granite from Mrakotin, south Bohemia, for the tombstone, the same material of which the obelisk, designed by Slovenian architect Josip Plecnik, was made at Prague Castle, the presidential seat, Hoelzel said.

The lines in the tombstone's relief resemble the Czech national flag's shape. The four-metre high tombstone is decorated with bronze reliefs of angels and Virgin Mary created by Zoubek.

The state funeral of Havel was held in St Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle last Friday, December 23. It was attended by heads of state and other current and former statesmen from all over the world. A private ceremony for his family and friends followed in Prague's crematorium on the same day.

A cultural event as a homage to Vaclav Havel was organised by his brother Ivan in the Lucerna palace, built by their grandfather, on Wenceslas square on Friday evening.