Nativity Scenes in the Czech Republic

Betlém or jesličky

Czech has two words for it, and which one you hear depends on where you are, not what you mean.

Jesličky means “little manger,” just like the French crèche and the English “crib.” And like the French word, jesle also means daycare. It’s the word used in Prague and in books.

Betlém (“a Bethlehem”) is the word used in the woodcarving regions: the foothills of the Krkonoše and Orlické hory mountains, Třebíč, Třešť. There, the nativity is named after the place it shows, not after the manger. The maker is a betlemář and the craft is betlemářství, the name it goes by today on official heritage lists.

Born of a ban

Nativity scenes came early to the Czech lands, around 1560, with the Jesuits of Saint Clement’s in Prague. For two centuries they stayed in churches, and they were the main symbol of Christmas. The Christmas tree didn’t catch on until the 1800s.

Then came the reforms of Emperor Joseph II. Around 1782, his decrees banned nativity scenes from churches as “unworthy and childish.” That changed everything. With nowhere else to go, the nativity moved into people’s homes. And there it became a family craft, carved during the winter, handed down, and added to year after year.

About a decade later, the same thing happened in Provence: when the French Revolution closed the churches, families brought the nativity home and the clay santon was born. Two bans, two folk traditions. The difference is the material: Provence chose clay, Bohemia chose wood.

History repeated itself under communism. A 2024 South Bohemian heritage listing says it plainly: back then, making a nativity scene was a quiet way to keep practicing the faith when religious expression was restricted.

The regional schools

What they all share is local characters. The Czech nativity isn’t set in the Holy Land. It’s set at home. The shepherds are joined by local workers: miners in Příbram, fishermen in South Bohemia, merchants in the towns.

Příbram and the Podbrdsko, silver-mining country, have the best-documented tradition, at its height between 1820 and 1938. Miners appear in full dress uniform, with white trousers and crossed hammers. Three types are worth looking for:

• chlebáčky: nativities made of bread dough, a mix of flour, sawdust and water. People called them the nativities of the poor.
• špulky: figures turned on a lathe and finished with dough.
• štufnverky: models of mines that combine carving with real minerals from Příbram.

The Krkonoše and the Podkrkonoší, along with the Královédvorsko, Náchodsko, Broumovsko and Orlické hory areas, are the heart of Czech woodcarving and the birthplace of the great mechanical nativities built at home. The craft has been on the Hradec Králové region’s heritage list since 2019.

Třešť, in the Vysočina region, does things its own way: a landscape built up in tiers from tree stumps, moss and other natural materials, with a painted backdrop at the back. Locals call it lončoft, from the German word Landschaft (landscape). Freestanding figures in front of a painted background: a mix of both approaches.

Paper nativities

Around 1790, printed cut-out sheets came along, first engraved and colored by hand, later printed in color. Anyone could afford one: you bought a sheet, cut out the figures and glued them to cardboard.

In 1902, the painter Mikoláš Aleš breathed new life into the form with his own sheets, and Josef Lada and others followed. They made a clear choice: no more Middle Eastern scenery. Instead, they drew Czech and Moravian landscapes, local buildings and regional dress. Collectors of these sheets call themselves papíráci.

Mechanical nativities

This is the great Czech specialty, and there’s nothing else like it in the world.

The Třebechovice betlém, also called the Proboštův betlém, was made by three men all named Josef: Probošt designed it, Kapucián carved the figures and Friml built the mechanism. They worked on it from the 1880s until 1926. It’s nearly 23 feet long, weighs about 2,200 pounds, and has more than two thousand wooden parts. The figures are linden, the mechanism is hornbeam and beech, and nothing is painted, because bare wood warps less. Even the gears are made of wood.

In 1999, it was named a national cultural monument, the same status as Karlštejn Castle, and it’s the only nativity in the country with that title. It also represented Czechoslovakia at the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal.

In Jindřichův Hradec, the Krýzovy jesličky is on another level entirely: about 650 square feet, 56 feet long, roughly fourteen hundred figures, about a hundred and fifty of them moving, all powered by a single motor. Its maker, Tomáš Krýza, was a master stocking maker who worked on it for more than sixty years. The figures are made of flour-and-sawdust dough and papier-mâché, dressed in fabric. They’re too fragile to travel, so it has never been lent abroad.

Finally, in Jilemnice, the Metelka betlém may be the most impressive feat of engineering: one hundred forty-two figures making three hundred fifty different movements, all powered by a slowly falling weight. A schoolteacher spent thirty years on it, from 1883 to 1913, and the mechanism still works without ever having been rebuilt.

Where to see them

The Nativity Museum in Třebechovice pod Orebem, in East Bohemia, is home to the Proboštův betlém and more than four hundred nativity scenes from every region, in wood, glass, ceramic, paper and wax. It’s open all year, Tuesday to Sunday, and its website is in Czech, English, German and Polish.

You can see the Krýzovy jesličky at the regional museum in Jindřichův Hradec, in fifteen-minute time slots. The museum is open every day from mid-December to Epiphany.

The event not to miss is the Betlémská cesta in Třešť, the town’s nativity trail. From December 26 to February 2, about twenty families open their homes to show their nativity scenes, along a marked route of about four miles. It has been on the Czech national heritage list since 2015.

As for clubs, the České sdružení přátel betlémů (the Czech association of friends of the nativity) was founded in Hradec Králové in 1990, has about five hundred fifty members in thirteen regional sections, is based at the Třebechovice museum and publishes the magazine Betlémy a betlemáři. It’s a member of the international federation, of which it took a vice presidency in 2026. Its website is in Czech only.

There’s no big national exhibition. Instead, each regional chapter puts on its own show in December.