If anyone brings Poland and the Czech Republic together, it is the patron saint of both countries, the Bishop of Prague St. Adalbert. He is a symbol of the struggle between Christianity and paganism and shared the dream of a Christian Europe with his friend, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III. Prague’s cathedral has borne his name since 1060. In 993, he founded the Břevnov Monastery, which includes the oldest brewery in Bohemia. The local beer is worth a taste, and once a year they brew it according to an old medieval recipe. In Bohemia, St. Adalbert failed to spread Christianity as he would have liked, so he set out for Poland and what was then Hungary, where he baptised Saint Stephen, who would later become the first king of Hungary. He then went to the Polish prince Bolesław the Brave with the aim of undertaking a missionary journey. This led along the banks of the Vistula and the Gulf of Danzig. In spite of warnings that the pagan Prussians had no desire for evangelisation, he persisted. He was captured and murdered on 23 April 997. Adalbert’s relics were so important to Bolesław the Brave that he had them weighed in gold and deposited in the cathedral in his seat at Gniezno. Half a century later, a Czech prince brought them back to his homeland. However, Adalbert’s martyrdom is far from the end of his story. After his death, Emperor Otto III made a symbolic tour of Europe and asked Pope Sylvester II to declare him a saint. As a result, the first Polish archbishopric was established over his grave in Gniezno, Poland, in the presence of the Emperor and the Pope, and the Polish prince Bolesław the Brave gained the royal crown for Poland. Following the example of these powerful men, you can pay homage to St. Adalbert at the Cathedral of St. Vitus, Wenceslas and Adalbert at Prague Castle, where his authentic relics are preserved. Saint Adalbert is called the first European owing to his vision of Europe as an international community built on Christian foundations. Adalbert’s concept of friendship among the central European nations later inspired Václav Havel to establish the Visegrad Group. In Poland, you can recall fragments of Adalbert’s life on 18 stunning bronze reliefs of the doors of the cathedral in Gniezno.