The publication is the first book to provide a comprehensive account of the building of a nationwide network of cultural houses, which were systematically established during the socialist period in the former Czechoslovakia. As places of public life in post-war society, these buildings enjoyed generous state support, not only economically but also politically and legislatively. Our interest is not only focused on their specific typology, but we also look at their educational and emancipatory potential as well as their role as a political tool for the organization and control of leisure. The publication also focuses on the search for the roots and programmatic antecedents of cultural institutions established from the nineteenth century onwards and in the inter-war period (association and national or workers' houses), with an overlap into the post-1989 period, when buildings and their operators had to, and sometimes still have to, cope with the demands of modernisation. The book covers both the Czech and Slovak context of the construction of cultural houses, which not only manages to cover the entire territory of the former Czechoslovakia, but also to capture the different historical experiences.
