Tel Aviv/Prague, June 29 (CTK) – A square in Haifa, Israel, was named after former Czech president Vaclav Havel in the presence of Czech Culture Minister Daniel Herman Monday, the ministry’s spokeswoman Simona Cigankova has told CTK.
Streets and buildings have also been called after Havel elsewhere in the world.
Havel (1936-2011), playwright and dissident under the communist regime, was the last Czechoslovak and the first Czech president in 1989-2003.
The square named after Havel Monday is in the new Shimon Peres neighbourhood on the Mount Carmel on a slope of which Haifa is situated.
The ceremony was also attended by Mayor of Haifa Yona Yahav and Czech ambassador to Israel Ivo Schwarz. A film on Havel was screened in the local town hall.It was also seen by Czech expatriates.
A street in Jerusalem is to be called after Havel and Havel’s bench is to be unveiled at Tel Aviv University on the 25th anniversary of resumption in 1990 of relations between former Czechoslovakia, to which the Czech Republic has been a successor since 1993.
Gdansk, Poland, has a street called after Havel and a street and the adjacent park in the centre of another Polish town, Opole, also bear his name.
One of the European Parliament’s buildings in Strasbourg is also called after Havel and a Vaclav Havel Library was opened in Paris in November 2013.
Havel’s benches exist in Dublin, Washington, Barcelona and Oxford. The best known building in the Czech Republic called after Havel is the international airport in Prague-Ruzyne.
