Abstract
The name for the landscape between Křečhoř and Bedřichov hills has settled and nobody names it other than “the landscape of the battle at Kolín”. The battle took place on the 18th June 1757 when the armies of Prussian king Friedrich II and of Empress Maria Theresa clashed.
In my paper, I ask why we talk about the landscape of the battle – is it because of the battle itself or rather because of the monuments reminding it? Time and place have become fixed in the monuments, the battle has been continuously re-materialised within tourist souvenirs, activities of army history clubs, with every new edition of a tourist map, etc. This could be seen as a kind of totality, a freezing of other times – the sense of the landscape here is given by the single event.
But the polyphony landscape usually speaks out pose a question whether for a visitor this landscape represents a place of a bloody battle, of monuments, of re-enacted battles and celebrations of Austrian empire, or just a nice terrain to go cycling.