Czech-German culture centre opens in Kvilda

Kvilda, South Bohemia, Sept 22 (CTK) - Painting, plastic arts and photographic symposiums and a number of other social events will take place next year in the Czech-German Culture Centre opened in Kvilda (Aussergefild) Saturday, Mayor Vaclav Vostradovsky has told CTK.

The centre cost some 24 million crowns,

It will enrich the lives of locals as well as visitors to the Sumava Mountains, Vostradovsky said.

The idea to create a meeting place for Czech and German artists emerged in 2008.

The village offered them a former boarding house for the purpose.

This was followed by the establishment of the civic group Kvilda Arts Centre. Its German partner Kunstverein GRAZ from Regensburg then joined the project.

It succeeded in the Programme of Cross-Border Cooperation Target 3 the Czech Republic - Free State Bavaria 2007-2013.

It took three years to build the centre.

Petr Kolar, chairman of the civic grop, said the centre was a multifunctional facility. In the old, reconstructed building a room was created for concerts and lectures as well as working rooms and a living room with 14 beds.

Besides, there is a workshop and other facilities in the surrounding complex.

Exhibitions, concerts and theatre performances will be held in the centre.

Kvilda, which is the municipality with the highest altitude in the Czech Republic, is one of the major tourist resorts in the Sumava.

It is situated in the middle of the Sumava National Park at the altitude of 1065 metres. Before World War Two, almost all of its residents were Germans.

At present, there are about 200 inhabitants.