Opava hosts a festival dedicated to landscape and public space

Opava - Opava hosts a three-month festival dedicated to landscape and public space. The event called Landscape Festival Opava will offer exhibitions, expert lectures, and music festivals at various locations in the city from May to September. In the past three years, the event took place in Prague and attracted tens of thousands of visitors, according to the organizers. Tomáš Kaplan, the event spokesperson, said this to ČTK.

"Part of the organizers lives in Prague, but they are from Opava. I attended the festival last year, and the idea caught my interest," said Dalibor Halátek, the deputy mayor of Opava, to ČTK. He added that considering the organizers' background, it was not too difficult to convince them to move the event to Opava for one year.

From May to September, Opava will see many exhibitions related to garden and landscape architecture, expert lectures, workshops, and a rich accompanying cultural program. "In many places around the city, diverse installations created by leading Czech landscape architects, architects, and artists will appear during the festival," Kaplan said.

Another goal of the festival is to revitalize urban public space, particularly along the banks of the Opava River and at the Municipal Swimming Pool. "Opava is a beautiful cultural city with a long-standing tradition in culture. However, landscape and public space have not received much attention, and we want to change that with our project. Our main goal is to raise public awareness of the significance of landscape architecture in relation to contemporary architecture and public space," said Dan Merta, the director of the Jaroslav Fragner Gallery in Prague. The gallery is the organizer of the event.

One of the highlights of the planned festival will be the revitalization of the banks of the Opava River in the city center. Over ten days in June, a number of cultural events will take place there. These aim to showcase the possibilities offered by a currently inaccessible location to the public. "We believe in revealing the hidden potential of selected locations. The interventions and designs will bring new life to places that are currently unused and will attempt to find solutions for them," Halátek added.

The official opening is scheduled for May 28, when a music festival will take place at Ptačí vrch in Sady svobody. Interested parties can find more information about the program on the website at www.landscape-festival.cz.