Tadeusz Siwek

Abstract

The article presents the most significant territorial divisions of the contemporary Czech Republic with respect to the Czechs’ subjectiveperception of them, as well as in comparison with the divisions found in Poland. The author focuses on the differences in the perceptionof the following territorial dichotomies: the capital – the peripheries, the city and town – the village, the borderland previously inhabitedby Germans (commonly referred to as the Sudetes Region and known even more widely as Sudetenland) – the interior of the state, andthe perception of the cultural, historical, religious and administrative regions. All of the issues discussed are documented by statisticaldata and the author’s own research, as well as observations made by the author who has lived in the country since his birth.

Keywords: territorial division, perception, mental maps, cultural regions, administrative regions, Czech Republic

Tadeusz Siwek, University of Ostrava Faculty of Science, Department of Human Geography and Regional Development Dvořákova 7, 701 03 Ostrava: Czech Republic