Literary Café with Richard Šípek

The second in a series of Literary Cafés takes place on 21 May 2026 at 18:00 in the Týnská Literary Café, marking the 550th anniversary of printing in Czech lands. The evening's theme is Readers and Libraries in the Early Modern Period. Your guide will be Richard Šípek, a book historian from the Manuscripts and Early Printed Books Department of the National Museum Library.

The evening will explore how reading habits and book use differed in the Early Modern Period from today, what aristocratic and bourgeois libraries looked like in the past, whether books were meant solely for reading or also to represent their owner, what people wrote in their books, and what we can learn about our ancestors from books. The event is organized by the Department of Book History at the Library of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Admission is free until capacity is reached; advance booking is not required.