Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague

Faculty of Arts
Filozofická fakulta
The main building of the Faculty of Arts in the Old Town of Prague.
Former names	Artistická fakulta
Established	1348 (1348)
Type	Faculty
Academic affiliation	Charles University in Prague
Location	Prague, Bohemia, Czech Republic
Dean	doc. Mirjam Friedová, Ph.D.
Students	ca. 9,000 (ca. 13,500 including U3A and other courses)
Undergraduates	ca. 5,000
Postgraduates	ca. 2,200
Doctoral students	ca. 1,500
Website	www.ff.cuni.cz

The Faculty of Arts, Charles University, is one of the original four faculties of Charles University in Prague. When founded, it was named the Faculty of the Liberal Arts or the Artistic Faculty. The faculty provides lectures in the widest range of fields of the humanities in the Czech Republic, and is the only university faculty in Europe which provides studies in all the official languages of the European Union. The faculty has around 1,000 members of staff, over 9,000 students, and a flexible system of more than 700 possible double-subject degree combinations.

The faculty was founded as the Faculty of Liberal Arts of Charles University by Emperor Charles IV on April 7, 1348, part of the emperor's attempt to establish the Kingdom of Bohemia as the permanent centre of the Holy Roman Empire and to place greater emphasis on the development of learning and culture in Prague. At that time, students attended the Faculty of Liberal Arts to receive education primarily in rhetorics and philosophy, later going on to pursue other subjects. The Faculty of Liberal Arts soon became the largest part of the university. In 1366, Emperor Charles IV endowed it with the first Prague college, the Collegium Carolinum; as part of the college, the first library of the artistic faculty was established, of manuscripts donated by the king.

Following the Hussite wars, the Faculty of Liberal Arts became the nucleus of the university for two centuries. From the 17th century, the faculty was known as the Faculty of Arts and, until the middle of the 19th century, its programme served as a compulsory preparatory higher education for future students of all the other faculties.

From the 18th century, as well as philosophy, the faculty offered programmes in aesthetic theory, pedagogy, mathematics, astronomy, natural sciences, engineering sciences, economy, and history. These were complemented in the 19th century by oriental studies, archaeology, religious studies, and philology. Study of languages such as Czech, Italian, French, and Hebrew, and their respective literature and culture, also began to develop. Following the liberalization of the academic environment in the second half of the 19th century, the faculty started to accept women students in 1897.