Czechmatediary

If you are planning a trip to Czech or just have not been back for a while and would you like to reminisce in your living-room this is a good site for you. Virtual Czech (click here) allows you to travel virtually all over this beautiful country! This way you can decide which Czech  town/city is prettier to sight-see (a very hard task) or you can just visit the places where you grew up - everything over the Internet (crazy, huh?).

CZ: Jestlize se chystate na vylet do Ceske Republiky nebo jste tam zkratka jiz dlouho nezavitali a chcete si zavzpominat primo ve vasem obyvaku, tak pro vas mam prijemne prekvapeni. Pomoci Virtual Czech (kliknete zde) totiz muzete virtualne cestovat po celych Cechach. Kdo vi, mozna ze tam na tech satelitnich mapach uvidite sveho kamarada? Nebo sami sebe???

Telc, also called the “Moravian Venice” is a true pearl of Moravia, the south-east region of the Czech Republic. Reflected in the surface of peaceful ponds, the royal city was founded at the beginning of 12th century, located on the crossroads of busy merchant routes. Its very beginnings are connected with the victory of the fearless Moravian Duke Otto II who, in order to commemorate his victory, built a chapel and later also a local church with its surrounding buildings, which is the Old Town of today. Later it was bought out by the most famous Czech king, Charles IV  who later exchanged it with Jindrich of Hradec for another (probably more exciting?) castle. The Hradec family is the one who made the city as beautiful as it is today. They build the Telc castle, the water fortifications and the beautiful Gothic houses around the large marketplace. Unfortunately half of it was burnt to the ground in 1368 and later burnt some more by the Hussites who conquered the whole town except for the castle. (more…)

Kostnice (Bone church) is a small chapel located in the town of Kutna Hora. The name already uncovers the big secret: the church is a home to a lot of human bones. And when I say “a lot”, I mean A LOT: the sanctuary contains close to 70,000 human skeletons, artistically arranged to create decorations and furnishings for the church. There are only 2 questions I had when I saw all these bones in person:

1/ Why so many of them?

In 1278 the Czech king Otakar II sent one of his monks to the Holy Land in Jerusalem to bring back some of the “real” soil. The monk returned safe and sound and with a bag of Jerusalem soil over his back. Once he sprinkled it over the Bone church cemetery it became a hot burial site in the whole Europe and everyone wanted to be laid to rest pretty much there (result –>a lot of bones). (more…)

Not very far from Prague lies the mining town of Kutna Hora. It is definitely one of the shiniest gems of the Czech Republic and that is why it became the UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995. Thanks to the abundance of silver mines, the town became economically even more important than Prague in the 13th century. What really makes the Kutna Hora, however, is the Gothic-style, five-naved St. Barbara Church (Chram sv. Barbory) - one of the most famous churches in Central Europe. Peter Parler, one of the most known Czech architects of all times, started the construction in 1388. The building went very fast at first but when the Hussite Wars started in 1420 everything was put on hold and the temple ended up half-finished. Since the “roof” of the building was nonexistent, the common rainfall combined with the winter snow storms began to destroy the structure. (more…)