Wax heart for Havel installed by National Theatre

Prague, Feb 10 (CTK) - A big heart made of the candles people lit in commemoration of the late Vaclav Havel in the latter half of December has been installed at the courtyard of the National Theatre complex in Prague's centre Friday.

Havel, a playwright, leading anti-communist dissident and the first post-1989 Czechoslovak and Czech president, died on December 18 aged 75.

Artists gathered the candles that people lit in Havel's honour at many places, melted them and used the hundreds of kilograms of wax to make a two-metre high sculpture shaped as a heart.

At the unveiling ceremony Friday, the artists said its author is the force that made many people come to the St Wenceslas statue and other sites related to Havel in Prague and elsewhere in the country irrespective of the bustling pre-Christmas time to light candles and express their hope and faith.

Havel's widow Dagmar attended the unveiling ceremony.

The artists, Lukas Gavlovsky and Roman Svejda, have named the sculpture The Heart for Vaclav Havel.

It is an open heart that can be stepped in.

If the weather enables it, the heart is to stay outside the National Theatre by April 10.