When in 1883 the first part of the series Bohemia was published with the subtitle Joint work of Czech writers and artists, the Prague publisher and bookseller Jan Otto had no idea that he was laying another important stone in the foundations of the process of forming the modern Czech nation. The work, in which the greatest figures of Czech literature and visual arts (Alois Jirásek, Eliška Krásnohorská, Jaroslav Vrchlický, Teréza Nováková, Antonín Chittussi, Karel Liebscher, etc.) participated to varying degrees, introduced the reader to the history, landscape, towns, villages or architectural monuments of one of the basic territorial units of the Habsburg monarchy. The cycle of Bohemia published in the years 1883-1908 represented a cultural topography, and at the same time, thanks to the expensive and rich artistic edition, this series also fulfilled an aesthetic and representative function.