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Team SeeThis.Place
Complete travel guide to Czechia. Handpicked places including waterfalls, mountain roads, thermal springs, UNESCO sites, scenic drives and hidden gems. All with GPS coordinates.
The castle looms over Prague like a silent general. Nine centuries of power behind one wall. The spire of St. Vitus Cathedral pierces the skyline like a needle — visible from every corner of the city. At night the façades light up and the complex glows like a fortress of gold above the Vltava. The largest coherent castle complex in the world.
GPS: 50.0905, 14.4005
Thirty saints stare down from the balustrade. The Vltava drifts slowly beneath sixteen arches, and Prague Castle towers in the background like a stage set no designer could dream up. 516 metres of sandstone, laid in 1357. You feel every one of those 650 years beneath your feet.
GPS: 50.0865, 14.4114
Every minute counts. Literally. Since 1410 this mechanism has tracked time, solstice, moon phase and zodiac from Prague's town hall tower. Every hour two small windows open and the twelve apostles file past. Death pulls the bell-ropes. The world's oldest working astronomical clock.
GPS: 50.0870, 14.4208
The Vltava carves a wild S-curve, and in the middle of that double bend sits an entire medieval town like a still life. Red rooftops, a Renaissance tower painted like a stage set, and water so still the whole town mirrors itself. Český Krumlov is the town time forgot to tear down.
GPS: 48.8125, 14.3153
40,000 people's bones. Stacked, sorted, arranged as art. A chandelier containing every bone in the human body. Skulls in pyramids. Ribs as garlands. It is macabre and beautiful at once — a church that forces you to look death in the eye and discover that it has patterns.
GPS: 49.9572, 15.2863
A triangular square ringed by Renaissance houses in candy colours — pastel pink, mint green, ochre, pale blue. All with gables, all different, all perfect. The town sits on an island between three ponds, and in the morning everything mirrors itself in the water like a painting that fell off the wall.
GPS: 49.1841, 15.4536
Steam rises from fountains in the middle of town. Twelve hot springs bubble up through the earth at temperatures reaching 72°C. You drink the water from special porcelain cups with built-in spouts — it tastes of iron and earth and health. Karlovy Vary has cured royalty since Charles IV chased a deer in 1370 and found the spring.
GPS: 50.2277, 12.8850
Sandstone pillars rise like the fingers of a buried giant. Hundreds of them, 30-40 metres tall, covered in moss and pine needles, scattered across a valley that looks like a fantasy world. Bohemian Paradise — Český ráj — is Europe's oldest geopark and Czechia's first protected nature area since 1955.
GPS: 50.5451, 15.1944
Europe's largest natural sandstone arch. 26 metres wide, 16 metres tall, shaped by millions of years of erosion in Bohemian Switzerland. You stand before it and feel like an ant beneath a portal built by gods. Under the arch clings Sokolí hnízdo — the Falcon's Nest — a small mountain hotel from 1882 that looks like something from a fairy tale.
GPS: 50.8837, 14.2813
Two châteaux connected by 200 km² of designed landscape — avenues, lakes, temples, follies, vineyards. The Liechtenstein family spent 700 years turning South Moravia into Europe's largest artificial garden. Lednice château looks like a Gothic fairy tale. Valtice château is Baroque and grand. Between them: pure magic.
GPS: 48.8003, 16.8047
35 metres of Baroque aspiration, raised in gratitude after the plague. The column on Horní náměstí in Olomouc is the largest free-standing Baroque sculptural group in Central Europe — 18 saint sculptures, gilded sunrays and a Holy Trinity at the top gazing down over Moravia's most beautiful square.
GPS: 49.5939, 17.2504
An archbishop with a taste for beauty and an unlimited budget. Kroměříž was his canvas. Two gardens — a formal Baroque garden with geometric patterns so precise they look like a clock from above, and an English landscape garden with rare trees from around the world. The palace between them holds a painting collection that would make many capitals envious.
GPS: 49.2994, 17.3935
8,000 sgraffito panels. Every one scratched into plaster by craftsmen in 1568 — geometric patterns, biblical scenes, horseback warlords. Litomyšl Castle is Czech Renaissance in concentrate: Italian elegance translated into Bohemian sandstone. Smetana was born in the brewery here. His music still hangs in the air.
GPS: 49.8732, 16.3127
An entire Jewish quarter — intact, untouched, silent. 123 houses crammed between the river Jihlava and the hillside, with narrow lanes, courtyards and two synagogues. Třebíč is the only Jewish quarter outside Israel on UNESCO's World Heritage list. The ghetto survived because nobody bothered to tear it down.
GPS: 49.2177, 15.8795
A church shaped as a five-pointed star. Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel designed it in 1720 as a Baroque-Gothic hybrid no one else dared imagine. Seen from above the ground plan is a perfect star — five chapels, five entrances, five altars. The number five was sacred to Jan Nepomuk. Everything is five.
GPS: 49.5801, 15.9421
23 farmsteads around a village pond. All in South Bohemian folk Baroque — stucco decorations on the gables like a baker's finest marzipan figures. Holašovice is an entire village that looks like an open-air museum but where people still live, still make cheese, still mow the grass and still light candles in the windows at night.
GPS: 48.9669, 14.5401
One open floor. No load-bearing walls. Just steel columns, floor-to-ceiling glass, and a panorama of Brno that flows into the living room like another piece of furniture. Mies van der Rohe built Villa Tugendhat in 1930 — and invented the modern home. The onyx wall in the living room weighs 29 tonnes and glows like liquid honey.
GPS: 49.2072, 16.6161
Sandstone towers so tall and dense that light barely reaches between them. An entire city of rocks — gates, streets, squares, all shaped by 90 million years of erosion. Adršpach-Teplice is Central Europe's largest rock labyrinth. You walk in and lose your bearings. That's the point.
GPS: 50.6172, 16.1219
You peer into a hole — 138 metres deep, vertical walls, and an emerald-green lake at the bottom you can barely see. The Macocha Abyss is the deepest of its kind in Central Europe. Underground, the Punkva river runs through stalactite caves you can sail through in a boat. The Moravian Karst is an entire subterranean world.
GPS: 49.3727, 16.7273
Primeval forest, mist and total silence. Šumava is the Bohemian Forest — Central Europe's green roof, a mountain ridge along the German and Austrian border covered by the densest forests in Czechia. Černé jezero — the Black Lake — sits in a glacial bowl at 1,008 metres, dark and still as a mirror of obsidian.
GPS: 49.1815, 13.1866
Charles IV built this castle with one purpose: to hide the crown jewels and the holiest relics of the Holy Roman Empire. The towers rise stepwise up the hill — each level closer to God. The chapel in the great tower is lined with semi-precious stones and gilded glass. A box for crowns, built like a church.
GPS: 49.9395, 14.1880
Chalk-white Neo-Gothic castle with 140 rooms, 11 towers and a garden resembling an English landscape painting. The Schwarzenberg family visited Windsor in 1840 and returned with an architect and an ambition: to build England's most beautiful castle — in South Bohemia. The result is overwhelming.
GPS: 49.0519, 14.4402
Franz Ferdinand lived here. Archduke of Austria-Hungary, heir to the throne, passionate hunter. His diary records 300,000 animals killed in a lifetime. The walls drip with trophies. Konopiště is a castle packed to bursting with antlers, armour and an art collection that reveals a man obsessed with order and death.
GPS: 49.7796, 14.6567
A granite castle on a cliff embraced by the Ohře river on three sides. The town below is so small its entire medieval square can be taken in at a single glance. Loket — meaning elbow — is named after the river's sharp bend around the rock. Goethe called it the most beautiful place in Bohemia.
GPS: 50.1871, 12.7543
20,000 books. A ceiling fresco by Josef Raab. Globes from the 1600s. And a silence so thick you can taste it. The Baroque Library Hall of the Klementinum in Prague is one of the world's most beautiful rooms — and it knows it. Golden-brown woodwork, spiral columns and knowledge stretching back 400 years.
GPS: 50.0864, 14.4157
12,000 headstones pressed together on an area smaller than a football pitch. Layer upon layer — up to 12 burials on top of each other because the cemetery was never allowed to expand. The Old Jewish Cemetery in Josefov is quiet as a scream. Moss-covered stones lean in every direction. Beneath them: 600 years of history.
GPS: 50.0897, 14.4172
Prague's other castle — older, quieter and free of selfie sticks. Vyšehrad commands a cliff above the Vltava south of the centre. Smetana, Dvořák and Mucha are buried in the cemetery. This is where the Bohemian royal dynasty legendarily began — Princess Libuše pointed across the valley and foretold a city whose fame would reach the stars.
GPS: 50.0650, 14.4178
5 October 1842. The day Josef Groll tapped the first pilsner — golden, clear and utterly different from any beer the world had ever tasted. The Pilsner Urquell brewery in Plzeň still stands. The cellars are 9 km long. The beer is still tapped from oak barrels. Every pale lager in the world traces back to this building.
GPS: 49.7465, 13.3863
Europe's largest square. 133 by 133 metres of perfect symmetry, surrounded by arcades and Baroque façades in every colour of the rainbow. In the middle: the Samson Fountain from 1727 with a lion image nobody can quite explain. České Budějovice is South Bohemia's quiet capital — and yes, this is where the Budweiser name comes from.
GPS: 48.9745, 14.4751
Every even hour the fountain in Skalníkovy Sady begins its show: water dances to classical music as light shifts colour the jets red, blue, green. Mariánské Lázně is Bohemia's youngest spa town — discovered only in 1808, but quickly grown into one of Europe's most elegant. Chopin composed here. Edison visited. Goethe fell in love.
GPS: 49.9766, 12.7062
The wind tears at you at 1,603 metres. Sněžka is the highest point in Czechia — a dome-shaped summit in the Krkonoše Mountains where Poland begins on the other side. Up the Polish side runs a cable car. Up the Czech side, you walk — 9 km from Pec pod Sněžkou through dwarf pines and arctic flora. The new observatory on top looks like a flying saucer landed in the clouds.
GPS: 50.7360, 15.7400
721 metres of nothing beneath your feet. Sky Bridge 721 at Dolní Morava is the world's longest suspension footbridge — a thin steel line stretched between two mountainsides, 95 metres above the valley. You can see the pylons sway. You can feel the bridge rock. And halfway across, in the raw wind from Kralický Sněžník, you stop thinking and just walk.
GPS: 50.1489, 16.8370
Beneath Znojmo's cobblestones run 27 kilometres of tunnels. The underground network digs three floors down beneath this Moravian town — carved from the 14th century as cellars, warehouses and escape routes. Down in the dark, it's 8 degrees year-round. The sound of your footsteps vanishes into the corridor ahead. In the 17th century, the entire population hid here during the Swedish siege.
GPS: 48.8558, 16.0493
Water is everywhere in Třeboň. The town sits amid 6,000 ponds — a medieval water system so ingenious that UNESCO considered listing it. Carp swim slowly in the shallow pools, fishermen pull nets in October as they have for 500 years, and you sit on the triangular square with a Regent beer from the local brewery thinking: this is the Czechia nobody tells you about.
GPS: 49.0039, 14.7714
Prague's answer to the Eiffel Tower is 60 metres tall and sits on a hill, so it looks like it towers over the entire city. Petřín Tower was built in 1891 from railway tracks — literally recycled steel from the old horse tramway. 299 steps up, and all of Prague lies at your feet: the castle, the bridges, the curves of the Vltava. The funicular up the hill runs every 10 minutes.
GPS: 50.0835, 14.3954
In a forest by the Elbe, 24 baroque sculptures slowly decay. Matthias Braun carved them directly into the sandstone cliffs in the 1720s — virtues and vices at human scale, twisted by passion and pain. Hospital Kuks was Count Sporck's dream: a spa, a hospital, a church and a pharmacy, all in one baroque complex in the Bohemian wilderness.
GPS: 50.3975, 15.8895
The fortress is silent now. Terezín was built in the 1780s as a military fortress, but history remembers it for something else: from 1941 to 1945, the Nazis used it as a ghetto and transit camp for 150,000 Jews. 33,000 died here. 88,000 were sent on to Auschwitz. The Small Fortress was the Gestapo prison. Today the walls, cells and mass graves are open — not as a museum, but as a memorial.
GPS: 50.5139, 14.1652
Every house on the square is a drawing. Slavonice is a small town by the Austrian border where the Renaissance never quite let go — facade after facade is covered in sgraffito: knight scenes, biblical motifs, geometric patterns scratched into plaster 500 years ago. Under communism, the town lay in the closed border zone, so nobody touched it. The result is Czechia's best-preserved Renaissance town, and almost nobody knows it.
GPS: 48.9976, 15.3513
The castle crowns the vineyards like a white tiara. Mikulov is South Moravia's wine capital — a bright, warm town wedged between limestone hills and the Pálava Hills, where Czechia's best white wine grows. Beneath the castle hides Europe's second-largest wine barrel from 1643 — it holds 101,000 litres. And from Svatý kopeček behind town, you can see all the way to Austria while the sun warms the grapes.
GPS: 48.8065, 16.6361
Bouzov looks like something Disney drew after a dream about Bohemia. The white castle with pointed towers, arrow slits and a drawbridge rises from the Moravian forest like a fairy-tale illustration. But Bouzov is real — originally a 14th-century fortress, rebuilt 1895-1910 by the Teutonic Knights in neo-Gothic style with every medieval attribute: knight's hall, chapel, well, and a terrace overlooking beech forests.
GPS: 49.7027, 16.8872
Two rivers meet beneath the castle walls. Zvíkov sits on a cliff exactly where the Otava flows into the Vltava — and has done since the 13th century. The King of Bohemia built it as the realm's most important royal fortress. Today the water has risen: the Orlík dam turned the rivers into a lake, and the castle looks like it grows straight from the still water. Gothic and silent.
GPS: 49.4390, 14.1922
The trail winds 675 metres up through the treetops to a 40-metre observation tower with a slide down. Lipno Treetop Walk at Lipno Lake in South Bohemia is built in Bohemian spruce forest, and from the top you see the Šumava Mountains, Lipno reservoir and the Austrian Alps on the horizon. The tower has a spiral toboggan slide inside — 52 metres down in one long, dizzying spiral.
GPS: 48.6532, 14.2340
Eleven mazes in one garden. Loučeň is a 17th-century baroque chateau with Czechia's largest collection of hedge mazes — eleven different ones, spread across the castle grounds, from classic boxwood to modern mirror maze. Count Thun-Hohenstein built the first in the 19th century. Now children find their way through all of them while parents sit with coffee on the terrace pretending they didn't get lost themselves.
GPS: 50.2854, 15.0205
Beneath the limestone ridges 30 km southwest of Prague hides Bohemia's largest cave system. The Koněprusy Caves stretch across three levels with stalactites, underground lakes and a 15th-century counterfeiting workshop — yes, actual criminals used the caves to mint fake coins. The cave temperature is a constant 10°C, and the silence down there is total. 600 metres of route through 70 million years of geology.
GPS: 49.9161, 14.0689
15 minutes from Prague lies one of Europe's most beautiful castle gardens — and almost no tourists find it. Průhonice Park is 250 hectares of landscaped gardens with 1,600 species of trees and shrubs, a lake reflecting the neo-Gothic castle, and paths winding through azalea gardens in colours you didn't think existed. UNESCO listed the park in 1992. Praguers come on Sundays. Tourists don't know it exists.
GPS: 50.0004, 14.5575
The Vltava makes a sharp bend, and on the cliff above the curve sits Rožmberk, watching the river as it has for 800 years. The castle was the seat of Bohemia's most powerful noble family — the Rožmberks controlled half of South Bohemia from this rocky perch. Below, canoes drift slowly past on the Vltava's green water. It's one of the most beautiful river castles in Central Europe, and there are almost no visitors.
GPS: 48.6549, 14.3670
The Habsburgs' most notorious prison sits on a hilltop in the centre of Brno. Špilberk was Europe's harshest political prison in the 18th century — dark casemates without windows where Italian freedom fighters, Polish rebels and Czech dissidents slowly disappeared. Today the castle is Brno City Museum with one of Czechia's best modern views: all of South Moravia lies at your feet from the terrace.
GPS: 49.1944, 16.5989
A canal built by a shoe manufacturer. Tomáš Baťa — the man behind Bata shoes — built the canal in the 1930s to transport lignite from mines to his factories in Zlín. Today houseboats, canoes and small ferries drift slowly through the flat Moravian landscape between vine forests and sunflower fields. 53 km from Otrokovice to Skalica, 13 locks, and a pace that forces you to breathe deeply.
GPS: 49.1440, 17.4980
The castle hangs over the Sázava river like a cliff refusing to fall. Český Šternberk is one of the few Czech castles still owned by the family that founded it in 1241 — the Šternberks have lived here for 780 years, 32 generations in a row. Under communism, the family was expelled. After 1989, they came back. Now Count Zdeněk gives guided tours of the family home himself.
GPS: 49.8093, 14.9266
From the air, Josefov looks like a perfect star drawn in earth and water. The fortress town at Jaroměř is the best-preserved bastion fortress in Central Europe — built 1780-90 by Emperor Joseph II with double walls, water-filled moats and underground passages connecting 45 km of casemates. The fortress was never attacked. It's still intact. And you can walk through the entire underground system with a flashlight.
GPS: 50.3385, 15.9243
A Renaissance castle in the Bohemian wilderness, transformed into a five-star boutique hotel with 19 rooms. Château Herálec in the Vysočina region has 800 hectares of private forest, a spa in the old cellar, and suites with original fresco ceilings. Dinner is served in the knight's hall by candlelight. In the morning you wake to deer in the castle garden. It's Czechia's best-kept secret for those who want to live like Bohemian nobility — without paying like it.
GPS: 49.5307, 15.4543
No well. No kitchen. No trade route nearby. Houska Castle from the 13th century makes no sense — unless you know the legend. The fortress was built OVER a hole in the rock so deep nobody could see the bottom. Locals said it was the gateway to Hell. The chapel inside is dedicated to the Archangel Michael — the one who defeated Lucifer.
GPS: 50.4805, 14.6176
You are standing in the main square of Jihlava. Beneath your feet, 25 km of medieval passages open up in three levels, reaching 18 metres deep. The second-largest underground labyrinth in the Czech Republic — and nobody knows exactly where all the tunnels end. In 1978 speleologists found the so-called "luminous corridor" at 11 metres depth, where an unexplained light appears.
GPS: 49.3969, 15.5914
The air is 14 degrees. Year-round. Beneath the spa town streets of Teplice nad Bečvou, warm mineral water pulses up from 2 km depth and has sculpted aragonite formations that resemble coral reefs made of glass. Geyser stalagmites, cave pearls and white crystal flowers — the only aragonite cave in the Czech Republic, and one of just four in the world open to visitors.
GPS: 49.5285, 17.7401
A vertical abyss in the forest. The water is warm. And nobody has found the bottom. Hranická propast is the world's deepest flooded cave — a robot reached 450 metres in 2022 without hitting bottom. Total confirmed depth: 519.5 metres. The water pushes up from the deep, saturated with minerals, and the abyss is still growing.
GPS: 49.5322, 17.7507
3.5 metres of concrete. Ventilation with gas filters. Artillery that could fire across the entire valley. Bouda Fortress near Králíky in the Czech Republic was built to stop the Wehrmacht — and it was never used. In 1938 the Munich Agreement forced Czechoslovakia to surrender the Sudetenland, and the most advanced defensive line in interwar Europe fell without a shot.
GPS: 50.0693, 16.6770
Two faces stare from the cliff. 9 metres tall. Carved into sandstone in the middle of a forest near Želízy in the Czech Republic. It looks like something from antiquity — but it is the work of Václav Levý, a shoemaker's son who started carving crucifixes at age 10. Between 1841 and 1846 he carved the devil heads, a sphinx, an artificial cave and an entire world of stone faces out of the rock.
GPS: 50.4208, 14.4622
One of Europe's most lavish Gothic cathedrals — built not by a bishop, but by the silver mines of Kutná Hora. St Barbara's Cathedral took 500 years to complete, from 1388 to 1905. The flying buttresses look like a crown from above. Inside, 15th-century frescoes cover the entire ceiling with scenes from the miners' daily life. The town was once the second richest in Bohemia after Prague.
GPS: 49.9448, 15.2631
A Gothic castle growing out of the rock as if it had always been there. Pernštejn in the Moravian highlands was founded in the 1200s and never conquered — walls up to 8 metres thick. The Pernštejn family was one of Bohemia's mightiest noble dynasties. The most dramatic room is the knights' hall with its original 16th-century wooden ceiling. The moat is carved straight from bedrock.
GPS: 49.4508, 16.3183
The Bohemian kings' hunting castle, hidden deep in Central Europe's largest contiguous deciduous forest. Křivoklát was built in the 1100s and has a royal chapel with late-Gothic wood carvings and a round tower with 6-metre-thick walls. The library holds 52,000 volumes. The surrounding forest — Křivoklátsko — is a UNESCO biosphere reserve with lynx and black woodpeckers.
GPS: 50.0378, 13.8725
A fairy-tale valley of sandstone pillars, cave dwellings and a Gothic castle on a cliff. Kokořínsko lies 60 km north of Prague and is Bohemia's least-known natural gem. Kokořín Castle from the 1300s has a slender tower rising 38 metres above the forest. The valley sides hide pokličky — mushroom-shaped sandstone formations hollowed by wind and water. Some were inhabited until the 1800s.
GPS: 50.4948, 14.5341
Bohemia's best-preserved Gothic castle — wedged between two valleys like a stone wedge. Kost means bone in Czech, and the castle's white tower rises like a bleached bone above the Plakánek valley in Český ráj. Built before 1349 with trapezoid walls designed to deflect cannonballs. Never taken by force. Three ponds served as defence — enemies drowned in the mud.
GPS: 50.4903, 15.1350
A 12-km wall of sandstone cliffs rising like a fortress above the Broumov valley in northeast Bohemia. Broumovské stěny is the most dramatic geological formation in the Czech Republic — vertical walls up to 100 metres tall with narrow gorges, caves and freestanding pillars. The trail along the cliff edge passes viewpoints with 300-metre drops. Below lies the baroque Broumov monastery from 1322.
GPS: 50.5328, 16.3086
A giant steelworks from 1828 in the heart of Ostrava, transformed into the Czech Republic's most spectacular cultural centre. The blast furnaces soar 70 metres high, and the gasometer is now a concert hall. Bolt Tower — bolted on top of the old blast furnace — gives 360-degree views across the industrial landscape. Architect Josef Pleskot won the EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture.
GPS: 49.8203, 18.2795
Colourful wooden lodges from 1899 designed by Dušan Jurkovič at 1,018 metres altitude in the Beskydy mountains. Libušín and Maměnka are Art Nouveau built from local timbers and decorated with Moravian folk art in vivid colours. Libušín burned in 2014 but was rebuilt from original sketches. From Pustevny a trail leads to the Radhošť summit with a pagan god statue and a chapel side by side.
GPS: 49.4903, 18.2658
Colourful wooden lodges from 1899 designed by Dušan Jurkovič at 1,018 metres altitude in the Beskydy mountains. Libušín and Maměnka are Art Nouveau built from local timbers and decorated with Moravian folk art in vivid colours. Libušín burned in 2014 but was rebuilt from original sketches. From Pustevny a trail leads to the Radhošť summit with a pagan god statue and a chapel side by side.
GPS: 50.1498, 12.4159
A baroque château balancing on the edge of an 80-metre cliff above the Dyje river, right on the Austrian border. Vranov nad Dyjí started as a Romanesque fortress in the 1100s, but Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach — the architect who also designed Schönbrunn — transformed it into a baroque palace in the 1690s. The oval Hall of the Ancestors with its cupola ceiling is architecturally unique. Podyjí National Park below is the smallest and most pristine in the Czech Republic.
GPS: 48.8947, 15.8128
A baroque château balancing on the edge of an 80-metre cliff above the Dyje river, right on the Austrian border. Vranov nad Dyjí started as a Romanesque fortress in the 1100s, but Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach — the architect who also designed Schönbrunn — transformed it into a baroque palace in the 1690s. The oval Hall of the Ancestors with its cupola ceiling is architecturally unique. Podyjí National Park below is the smallest and most pristine in the Czech Republic.
GPS: 49.1074, 17.3119
A royal castle from the 1200s atop a 508-metre forested hill in the Chřiby mountains. Buchlov was one of the most important royal castles in Moravia and served as a border post against Hungarian invasions. The two massive round towers are visible from afar. Inside hides a collection of Gothic wooden figures and a 16th-century alchemy lab. The hike up from Buchlovice château takes 45 minutes.
GPS: 48.8685, 16.6505
White limestone cliffs rising above vineyards and an artificial lake in southernmost Moravia — a piece of the Mediterranean planted in Central Europe. Pálava is a UNESCO biosphere reserve with rare steppe herbs, European bee-eaters and the world's northernmost wild almond trees. Děvín peak (554 m) gives views all the way to the Austrian Alps. Below, the wine towns of Mikulov and Pavlov produce the finest white wines in the Czech Republic.
GPS: 50.3447, 16.1517
A Renaissance square so perfect it looks designed — and it actually was. Nové Město nad Metují was founded in 1501 by Jan of Pernštejn with a triangular square surrounded by arcade houses in pastel colours. The château in the corner has a garden by Dušan Jurkovič and furniture by Josef Gočár. The whole town is built on a rocky knoll above the Metuje river, and the medieval bridge below still has its original railing.
GPS: 49.4144, 14.6578
The Hussite capital — founded in 1420 as a radical Christian utopia. The streets of Tábor's old town are deliberately built as a labyrinth to confuse attackers. Below them run 650 metres of 15th-century underground tunnels, now open to visitors. Žižka Square is named after Jan Žižka, the one-eyed general who never lost a battle. The Hussite Museum tells the story of the reform movement that came 100 years before Luther.
GPS: 50.0833, 12.8383
A Gothic castle and a baroque château built together on a cliff above the Teplá river — but the real treasure hides inside. The Reliquary of St Maurus from the 1220s is the second most important national treasure in the Czech Republic after the crown jewels. The gilded casket with 141 gemstones and 12 cameos was found in 1985 hidden under the floor after 50 years of searching. Bečov lies 20 minutes from Karlovy Vary.
GPS: 48.8892, 14.3570
The hop capital of the world — Saaz hops from Žatec have set the standard for pilsner since 1348. The town earned UNESCO status in 2023 for its unique hop architecture: drying kilns with ventilation towers, warehouses and sorting halls built exclusively for hop production. The Czech Hop Museum in the old malt house tells the whole story. The square with its baroque town hall and Trinity column is framed by Gothic and Renaissance townhouses.
GPS: 50.3300, 13.5444
One of the largest baroque palaces in Central Europe — an 80-metre-wide façade that completely dominates this small Moravian town. Count Johann Adam von Questenberg built the palace in the 18th century and installed a full opera house with 200 seats in the wing. The first Czech opera — 'O původu Jaroměřic' by František Václav Míča — premiered here in 1730. The French-style château garden stretches down to the Rokytná river.
GPS: 49.0939, 15.8931
The third largest synagogue in the world — only Budapest and New York are bigger. Plzeň's Great Synagogue was built in 1893 in a blend of Romanesque and Moorish styles with twin 45-metre towers. The interior holds 2,000 people beneath a vaulted ceiling painted in deep blue and gold. Closed for 40 years under communism. Today it serves as a concert and exhibition venue alongside religious services.
GPS: 49.7467, 13.3728
Beneath Brno's Zelný trh — the Cabbage Market — hides a network of medieval cellars connected by tunnels on three levels down to 8 metres deep. The labyrinth stored wine, beer and vegetables, and during the Thirty Years' War citizens sheltered here from Swedish sieges. Today it holds a recreated alchemist's laboratory and a room of medieval punishment methods. The temperature stays at 11°C year-round.
GPS: 49.1936, 16.6084
A neo-Gothic fairy-tale château in yellow and white with Bohemia's finest woodcarvings. Sychrov was home to the French princely family of Rohan — exiled by the French Revolution — for 150 years. Antonín Dvořák composed here as a guest and played the château organ. The 40 rooms have carved oak panels so detailed that master carver Petr Bušek and his team spent decades completing them. The park is designed in English landscape style with 150 rare tree species.
GPS: 50.6264, 15.0889
A blood-red château floating in the middle of a lake — Czechia's most photographed Renaissance castle. Červená Lhota sits on a granite island connected to shore by a stone bridge. The red colour dates from a 1597 rendering by Vilém Růt of Dírná and became the château's trademark. The interior is arranged as a 19th-century summer residence with 19 rooms. Legend says a woman threw a crucifix into the water, and the lake turned blood-red.
GPS: 49.2461, 14.8853
A Renaissance château with sgraffito decoration hiding one of Europe's darkest chapters — the North Moravian witch trials. Between 1678 and 1692, inquisitor Heinrich Franz Boblig had 56 innocent people tortured and burned at the stake here. The château itself is beautiful: arcaded galleries, ceiling paintings and an English garden. Next door stands Europe's oldest handmade paper mill from 1596 — still in operation.
GPS: 50.0319, 17.0406
Twin volcanic basalt towers rise from the landscape like a pair of horns — Baba (the Crone, 47 m) and Panna (the Maiden, 57 m). Trosky is the most iconic silhouette of Český ráj and Czechia's most photographed castle ruin. Built in the 14th century, you climb both towers via steep stone steps. From the summit the whole Bohemian Paradise unfolds — sandstone cliffs, forests and château hilltops.
GPS: 50.5098, 15.2252
Sandstone towers, narrow passages and views that steal your breath. Prachovské skály is the oldest climbing area in Český ráj — visited since the 19th century when romantics discovered the bizarre rock formations. The trail system has iron ladders, crevice passages and viewpoint platforms. Vyhlídka Míru (Peace Viewpoint) gives panoramas over 40 rock towers. Czechia's answer to Saxon Switzerland, just without the border control.
GPS: 50.4683, 15.2850
Czechia's best-preserved Gothic royal castle — built 1264-1278 by King Přemysl Ottokar II on a volcanic phonolite cone 604 metres above sea level. Two towers, a Gothic chapel and a palace building nearly intact. Máchovo jezero (Mácha Lake) glitters below, and in summer the castle serves as a starting point for hikes through the Kokořínsko area. Poet Karel Hynek Mácha placed the castle in Czech literature in 1836.
GPS: 50.5391, 14.7197
Czechia's oldest and largest open-air museum — founded in 1925 with over 100 historic timber buildings from the Wallachian region. Dřevěné městečko (Little Wooden Town) shows 19th-century village life with church, water mill and tavern. Craftspeople demonstrate blacksmithing, weaving and woodcarving. The Beskydy mountains form the backdrop. Over half a million visitors a year.
GPS: 49.4644, 18.1559
Two halls, 200,000 books, and the ceiling paintings make you forget to look down. Strahov Monastery Library is one of the world's most beautiful — the Theological Hall (1679) and the Philosophical Hall (1794) are intact baroque masterpieces with original book collections. The monastery was founded in 1143 by the Premonstratensian order and is still operating. The monastery brewery serves unfiltered wheat beer with views over Prague.
GPS: 50.0847, 14.3866
27 bells play a melody every quarter hour — and the sound carries across the Hradčany quarter like a time capsule. Loreta is Prague's most beautiful baroque pilgrimage church, built 1626-1631 with a replica of the Santa Casa (the Virgin Mary's house) at its centre. The treasury holds the Prague Sun monstrance — 6,222 diamonds set in a golden star. Fewer tourists than the castle, more soul.
GPS: 50.0893, 14.3890
Legend says Forefather Čech climbed this mountain, looked out across the fertile land and told his people: here we stay. Hora Říp (456 m) is Czechia's national mountain — a solitary basalt cone in the middle of the Bohemian plain. On top stands the Rotunda of St. George, a Romanesque church from 1126. The walk up takes 20 minutes. The view covers all of central Bohemia.
GPS: 50.3852, 14.2863
1,492 metres — the roof of Moravia. Praděd in the Jeseníky mountains is crowned by a 162-metre TV tower visible from the entire region. The mountain itself is a subalpine wilderness of dwarf pines, scree and wind speeds that make it Czechia's coldest spot. The hike from the Ovčárna hut takes 1 hour. In winter Praděd becomes a ski destination with the country's longest season.
GPS: 50.0852, 17.2317
Two castles on one hilltop — built because the king was furious with the old one. King Wenceslas IV lived in Žebrák castle, but after it burned in 1395 he built Točník right next to it, bigger and grander. Today you can visit both ruins on one walk. Točník's palace has intact Gothic windows and the bear pit (yes, they kept bears). 45 km west of Prague.
GPS: 49.8907, 13.8873
886 metres above sea level — Czechia's highest royal castle. Emperor Charles IV had Kašperk built in 1356 to protect the Golden Path through the Šumava mountains. Two massive watchtowers give 360° views across the Bohemian primeval forest. The castle is surprisingly well preserved, and in summer torchlit night tours with medieval music are held. Šumava National Park begins right outside the gate.
GPS: 49.1661, 13.5638
At 4.7 hectares, Helfštýn is one of Central Europe's largest castles. Five curtain walls, Gothic vaults and a courtyard that holds thousands of visitors during the annual Hefaiston festival (artistic blacksmithing). Smiths from around the world hammer glowing iron under the open sky. The castle stands on a hill above the Bečva valley in Moravia — strategically placed at the Moravian Gate.
GPS: 49.5186, 17.6288
Czechia's most important pilgrimage site — and the place where Slavic Christianity began. The Velehrad Basilica (1205) marks the spot where Saints Cyril and Methodius brought Christianity to Great Moravia in 863. The baroque church is impressive, but it's the atmosphere of 1,100 years of pilgrim tradition that makes it special. Pope John Paul II visited Velehrad in 1990 before 500,000 pilgrims.
GPS: 49.1040, 17.3945
Czechia's most visited pilgrimage site — 500,000 pilgrims a year visit the basilica on Hostýn mountain (736 m). Legend says the Virgin Mary saved the Moravians from the Mongol invasion in 1241 by sending a thunderstorm. The Way of the Cross up the mountain, the lookout tower and the holy spring make this an experience regardless of faith. The Hostýnské vrchy mountains around are perfect for hiking.
GPS: 49.3797, 17.7019
One of Czechia's oldest castles — built in the 12th century as a border fortress where Bohemia, Moravia and Austria meet. Landštejn's two massive Romanesque towers are unusually well preserved and offer views across Česká Kanada (Czech Canada — yes, they really call it that). The area is one of South Bohemia's least visited landscapes with forests, lakes and a silence that recalls Scandinavia.
GPS: 49.0240, 15.2306
A castle on a volcanic cone in the middle of the flat Elbe plain — Kunětická hora is visible from 30 km in every direction. The basalt cliff rises 307 metres above the surrounding fields, and the castle on top has Hussite history: the feared Jan Žižka used it as a base in the 1420s. The Renaissance portal is architecturally unique. Pardubice (home of perník/gingerbread) is just 8 km away.
GPS: 50.0800, 15.8128
A piece of Tuscany planted in the Moravian hills. Zámek Buchlovice (1707) is a rare example of Italian baroque in Czechia — two semicircular palace wings embrace a terraced garden with over 100 fuchsia varieties (Europe's largest collection). Count Leopold Berchtold — the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister who declared the First World War — lived here. The medieval castle of Buchlov looms on the hill behind.
GPS: 49.1074, 17.3119
Jan Žižka — the Hussite general with an eyepatch and a military record no crusading army could break — founded Tábor in 1420 on a rocky promontory above the Lužnice river. He designed the streets as a labyrinth: no invader could find their way in. Six hundred years later, it still works.
GPS: 49.4141, 14.6555
Třeboň isn't spectacular. That's exactly what makes it unforgettable. A medieval town in the middle of flatlands with 500 fish ponds — created by the Rožmberk family in the 1400s to supply all of Bohemia with carp. The sky doubled in size because water everywhere mirrors it.
GPS: 49.0043, 14.7716
A church pressed into a vertical limestone cliff. A spring that flows directly out of the rock. A Benedictine monastery standing here since the 900s — and no tourists. Sv. Jan pod Skalou is the place people drive past on their way to Karlštejn. That's their loss.
GPS: 49.9694, 14.1342
Sázava monastery was founded in 1032 — nine years before Normandy conquered England. It has survived the Hussites, Joseph II who dissolved it, and the Communists who used it as a grain store. The only monastery in Czech Republic that ever practised the Old Church Slavonic liturgy, banned by the Pope in 1097. The hill hid it, the river protected it.
GPS: 49.8774, 14.8981
Přemysl Otakar II founded Zlatá Koruna in 1263 with a single intention: to create a divine bulwark against the Austrian Vitkovid clan threatening his southern border. He called it 'The Golden Crown'. The monks who came were Cistercians — Europe's most disciplined builders. What they built took 200 years. It has stood for 760.
GPS: 48.8548, 14.3695