Havel Dies at Hrádeček

JAN 01 2011 · 12:00

Black flags hang over Prague on 18 December 2011, the day Havel died at his Hrádeček cottage at the age of 75. Place: Hrádeček, near Trutnov, northeast Bohemia Figures: Václav Havel, 75, former president · Dagmar Havlová, his wife · the cottage at Hrádeček, dissident weekend house since 1967 Hrádeček is a stone farmhouse in the foothills of the Krkonoše mountains, bought by Havel and his first wife Olga in 1967. It is where Charter 77 was drafted at the kitchen table in December 1976. It is where the secret police kept a permanent observation post in a caravan across the lane through the 1980s. It is where Havel returns, between presidencies and after, to write. On the morning of December 18, 2011, his respiratory illness, an inheritance of decades of cigarettes and the damp cells of Pankrác and Bory, finally closes. He is seventy-five. He has been out of public office for eight years.