The book deals with the architecture that served and continues to serve sporting and physical education activities in the Czech lands from the 16th to the 21st centuries. It represents the first work of this type by Czech architectural historians. It views sport as an important human activity, whose content has changed over the course of history.
In modern times sport has developed out of the training and recreation of the aristocracy into the form of a struggle for national emancipation and civil liberties, into a mass spectacle, into an instrument for representing the state, into a means of controlling the free time of the population, and into the form of their most private relaxation. Architecture has been well able to serve all these functions of sport. It has changed with the development of sport and lent sporting activities an appearance based on its own transformations of technology and style.
Among 60 outstanding buildings intended for sport and physical education, readers will find ball-game halls, riding-stables, swimming-pools, firing ranges and boathouses, gymnasiums for the Sokol and Turnverein physical education associations, lookout towers and cabins for hikers, stadiums, golf courses, cycle tracks and fitness centres.