Medieval Masterpiece : The Czech Republic’s Sleeping Beauty

In the relentless homogenization of Europe, it’s getting harder and harder to find a place where “differentness” hits you in the face.

The first time I stumbled into this Eastern European town, it looked for all the world like a place that had settled down to sleep somewhere around the Renaissance and then forgot to wake up. No modern buildings, no neon, no Golden Arches, no traffic lights, not even a Coke machine.

From the cobblestone streets, five centuries of ocher and pastel houses rose in a kind of shabby gentility, wearing their patched plaster as proudly as Scarlett O’Hara wore a dress made of drapes. It was the kind of time warp-ish town you wanted to take and wrap in Saran so thick that the relentless spread of Pizza Huts could never penetrate.

I found Cesky Krumlov that Sunday afternoon, three summers ago, purely by chance. My son, Callon, his Czech girlfriend, Marketa, and I were visiting her father, Ruda Pravda, a high school teacher and writer who lives in Ceske Budejovice, the largest town in what is still called Southern Bohemia. (The Czech Republic, the western portion of recently split Czechoslovakia, is composed of three historical regions: Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. The fourth region, Slovakia, is the new nation of Slovakia.) Marketa had defected from Czechoslovakia eight years before our visit, but with the fall of Communism there, father and daughter were reunited. On this particular Sunday , Ruda was determined that we should see Cesky Krumlov (pronounced CHESS-ky KROOM-loff), where time, he said, had stopped. He was right.

The Vltava River wrapped itself around the old town in a complete hairpin bend, creating the kind of easily defended peninsula that would have brought joy to the heart of a medieval knight. On the northern bank, a wall of rock rose vertically from the river, and crouched on the top, like a cat having a good morning stretch, was the castle of the ancient Rozmberks.

Callon stood in the middle of the cobbled street, for once speechless, his romantic heart doing a tarantella. “This is it,” he muttered.

“You’re going to paint it?”

“I’m going to live in it.”

Callon is an artist of the very modern sort. He does “installations” and assemblages and occasionally cryptic paintings that are light years removed from what the folks are buying back home. Cesky Krumlov may have been short on telephones and Colgate toothpaste, but it seemed to call to young artists the way the South Pacific’s Hiva Oa called to Gauguin.

Callon never left, and after my third visit last June, I regret to report that the world has found CK, as it is affectionately abbreviated by many expatriates. Well, if not the world, at least quite a few German and Italian tourists and the first, tiny wave of Americans. But so far, even though it’s standing-room-only in Prague as soon as the snow melts, very few packaged tours make it to Southern Bohemia. It is still, in the favorite words of travel writers, one of “Europe’s best-kept secrets.”

Guidebook writers who have stumbled across it are ecstatic. Their superlatives arch like rainbows into the ether. Says Berkeley Guides’ “On the Loose in Eastern Europe, 1993”: “Unlike most towns, Cesky Krumlov surpasses its postcards. From its majestic, haunting castle to its narrow twisting streets, it offers a glimpse of the Europe of most travelers’ dreams.” Adds “Fodor’s Eastern Europe ‘93”: “Cesky Krumlov is an eye-opener. None of the surrounding . . . villages, with their open squares and mixtures of old and modern buildings, will prepare you for the beauty of the old town.”

If Cesky Krumlov were just a small village, this remarkable state of preservation might seem less surprising. But here is a town that was smack-dab in the middle of Middle Ages trade routes and was once the ruling seat of the most powerful families in Bohemia. Over the years, artists, musicians and expatriates were drawn into its spell. Even today, it’s kind of a small-scale, latter-day Slavic Paris. So why the sleeping spell? In the 1950s, when so much architectural damage was done in the name of modernization in the Soviet Bloc, Cesky Krumlov was labeled a backwater of the first order. Oh, there was a paper mill up the river at Vyssy Brod, but that was the extent of the area’s industrial potential. The town council didn’t have a koruna to its name with which to rip down old buildings and put up new ones.

There was also the matter of the Austrian border a dangerous 14 miles away. No one was permitted to move into the town with the exception of large numbers of Gypsies. Cesky Krumlov slumbered, its old houses growing more shabby and worn--a little like Miss Havisham’s wedding dinner in “Great Expectations.”

The town today, luckily, has a cadre of Enlightened Ones who cast a watchful eye on modernization--Czech architects and artists and people of vision who came to Cesky Krumlov looking for a refuge during the gray years of communism. These are people who knew that an old Gothic music school is worth more than a spanking-new concrete parking garage.

Cesky Krumlov’s preservationists got a boost in December, when the town was named a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), entitling it to advice on historic preservation and possible financial assistance from UNESCO’s World Heritage Fund. In declaring it so, UNESCO called CK “an outstanding example of a small Central European medieval town (which) has retained its entire medieval layout and most of its historic buildings . . . relatively intact.”

Architect Peter Pesek and his wife, Jana, are two committed conservationists who are lovingly restoring a 16th-Century mill outside of town. Peter and Jana spent seven years searching through old drawings and archives, working in painstaking detail to create a model of Cesky Krumlov as it looked in the 18th Century. In the model, which takes up most of a large room in the Regional Museum, CK retains its ancient town walls and gates, clearly illustrating why it was never sacked or burned.

Even though most of the signage is in Czech, the museum--on Horni Street, near what was the town’s upper gateway--is worth a lengthy roam. There are fragments of the 16th-Century paper that was made in houses below the Church of St. Vitus. Puppets. Gargoyle masks. Wooden madonnas with angelic faces line the halls. There’s a model of a 17th-Century pharmacy and a superb collection of mid-17th-Century wooden baking forms: fishes, babies, Adam and Eve, Kaiser Rudolph II and an intricate form (dated 1635) of a woman wearing Elizabethan-style dress.

There’s still a warm, clubby atmosphere about life in CK. On velvet summer evenings, we walked down the narrow, uneven cobblestone streets illuminated by 19th-Century lamps, down to the central square to see what was happening. The square is dominated by a dark baroque pillar with a fountain at its base adorned by statues of St. Wenceslas, St. Vitus, John the Evangelist and others. The pillar was created in 1715 by a sculptor named Matous Jackel to give thanks for being spared of one of the plagues that were then sweeping Europe.

Sometimes we’d grab some Czech “fast food” before checking out the nightly gathering places--maybe a langos , a cross between a doughnut and a pizza, covered with garlic and tomato sauce; or perhaps some topinky , a fried bread with garlic. These dishes wouldn’t make the American Heart Assn.’s preferred list, but they do keep the vampires away.

Usually we’d eat out at Two Marys, as we called it (in Czech, it’s Dvou Marii), or Na louzi, where you can have a good meal of pork or chicken with lots of potatoes and maybe cabbage for $2 or less. Vegetables are slowly making their way onto Czech menus, along with salads. After dinner, we’d wander over to Satlava, a favorite gathering spot that was once the town prison. Inside the low-arched, white-washed room you can sit at wooden tables and buy sausages grilled in the open fireplace to munch with huge 20-cent tankards of beer.

In Eastern Europe, where apartments are small and relatives often live together, the pub becomes a place where friends entertain one another. Sort of a communal living room. On our evenings in the pubs there would be an easy mix of townspeople, “expats” and tourists. So far, Cesky Krumlov hasn’t been broken up into tourist places and places for the locals. At some point in the night, someone would bring out a guitar or a violin and a spontaneous concert would begin. I was astounded at the musical talent in Cesky Krumlov, but music is very important to the Czechs. One of my favorite local singers was a young woman named Marta who would sing sad Czech folk melodies in a voice so pure and lovely that it could grace any concert stage.

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Cesky Krumlov sits 14 miles above the Austrian border, about 100 miles south of Prague, in a thickly forested area near the Sumava Mountains. The lack of industrialization in the south has saved the forests and rivers from some of the extraordinary environmental devastation found in the “Black Triangle,” an area near the junction of the German/Polish/Czech borders. On that first visit to Krumlov, we stood on the Lazebnicky Bridge watching the kayakers and canoers and hoping they were experienced enough to avoid dumping into the murky Vltava. Local authorities were just beginning a massive cleanup of the river, which had been contaminated by a pulp mill upstream. Now, my son reports that people are once again swimming in the river and the fish have returned in great numbers.

Last year, I timed my summer visit to coincide with the annual Ruze (Five-Petaled Rose) Festival, an extended weekend in June during which the entire town plunges back into the Middle Ages. (Next year’s festival is scheduled for June 17-19.) Much of the color and festivity that fills Cesky Krumlov with romance harks back to the Rozmberks--the family that ruled most of Southern Bohemia for more than 300 years. For weeks before the festival, townspeople scurry around trying on elaborate costumes from the town collection, hammering swords, practicing lines for the grand pageant, rehearsing for musical performances or building elaborate medieval wooden games of skill.

The festival was officially launched by an elaborate parade that began from the Budejovice Gate, the only gate remaining from the town’s medieval fortifications. “Rozmberk” lords and ladies in elaborate velvet, brocade and pearl-encrusted garments walked sedately down the cobblestone streets followed by courtiers and soldiers on horseback and an open carriage carrying a bride whose marriage would climax the festivities. A medieval tradesman dragged a very suspicious-looking bear away from the onlookers. The parade--aristocrats, slaves, maidens, beggars, soldiers on horseback and fighters--arrived in the town square where Lord Peter I officially took the hand of his lady in marriage. Then the fun and games began. Musicians played their medieval ditties. The Fool made a fool of himself. On a wooden jousting machine, competitors got a bag of water dropped on their heads if they missed the target with their lances. Two men with staves balanced precariously on a log over the Vltava, until one knocked the other into the river with a flourish. All the while, music played and beer flowed. It was a perfectly splendid medieval day.

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The drink of choice in Cesky Krumlov is the local brand, Eggenberg, one of many superb pivos (beers) brewed in Bohemia. Beer is pivotal to the town’s social life and cafe society; it not only tastes better than the water (which Czech friends told me not to drink), but it seems an indispensable prop to life here. I followed my friends’ advice and drank bottled water in Cesky Krumlov, but it may not have been necessary. The best advice, wherever you are in the Czech Republic, is to ask the locals if they drink the tap water straight, or rely on boiling it or drinking bottled water. While generally free of parasites, in some parts of the country it has been contaminated by heavy metals because of industrial pollution of the rivers.

In June, the Czech Republic spills over with festivals. The week after the Ruze Festival, musicians from all over the country streamed into town. In the evenings, as we walked home across the Armady Bridge, we would hear music pouring out of the music school as the local symphony practiced for the upcoming Cesky Krumlov Music Festival. Music has been taught in this building for 500 consecutive years, and the quality of musician it produces is quite remarkable. One night during the festival, Marketa and I sat in the pews of the simple Gothic cathedral, the Church of St. Vitus, next door to the music school. In this austere, ancient setting, Musica Bohemica, a group of Czech musicians who continue to perform and keep medieval music alive, carried us back to the 12th Century with lutes and dulcimers.

The festival is not all Gothic concerts; folk music, the classics and contemporary jazz also filled the town for several weeks. In the town castle that week, we took a special tour that was really a time trip through the eras. As we walked into the Baroque chapel, a small group played music of the period; in the oldest part of the castle, musicians playing medieval instruments gave us a madrigal or two.

The Cesky Krumlov Castle, sometimes called the Cesky Krumlov State Chateau, family seat of the Rozmberks, and later the Eggenbergs and the Schwarzenbergs, is the second largest castle in the Czech Republic. (Like many Czech buildings, it takes its name from its town.) It is allegedly only one square meter smaller than Prague Castle--a deliberate design move by the Rozmberks during one of their many alterations and renovations to irritate Bohemia’s then-reigning king.

This massive complex, which is open and has guided tours during the spring, summer and early fall, was built over a 13th-Century fortress, and it oozes romance. On that first afternoon in Krumlov, we wandered over the Lazebnicky Bridge and down a narrow street squeezed between a cluster of irregularly shaped houses with high, pitched roofs. Off the main street, the Latran, we entered the outer bailey of the castle through the Red Gate.

In this first courtyard, on the right, there’s a former Salt House, first mentioned in 1511, a place where this precious commodity was bought and sold. The dominating landmark here is a round, 12th-Century tower that rises 238 feet above the lower castle and is the town’s most prominent landmark. The 13th-Century tower was renovated in the 16th Century to resemble a minaret with an arcaded Renaissance balcony, but fell into ruin over the years. For two years now, a scaffolding has obstructed the tower while historians scour the country trying to find old paintings that will show what the tower looked like in the 16th Century. The existing paintings only show one side and restorers are determined to be absolutely authentic.

For 300 years, the Rozmberk family, one-time landlords of this castle, developed and ruled Southern Bohemia with an iron fist. Settlers from Austria and Germany were invited in as craftsmen and traders, and a fortifying wall with four gates rose to protect the Rozmberk wealth.

As we walked across the former drawbridge, two rather lazy brown bears plodded around in a bear pit (formerly the moat) doing their bit for historical accuracy. (Bears have been kept at the castle since the 16th Century.)

The second courtyard, lined with cannons and painted in a distinctive Czech trompe l’oeil style, led through a covered passage to courtyard No. 3, where the official tour began. At the time, there were no tours in English; there are now. Each year, as money dribbles in, more and more rooms are being restored in the castle. As we walked over the intricately inlaid wooden floors, centuries of Rozmberks, Eggenbergs and Schwarzenbergs gazed down from their portraits. The long ballroom, or Masquerade Hall, is the highlight--the walls from floor to ceiling are covered with one of the most unusual rococo frescoes I’ve ever seen.

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As you stand in the middle of the ballroom, the three-dimensional painting conveys an illusion of being in an 18th-Century theatre with every square inch covered with life-size balustrades and theater boxes filled with musicians, spectators (some crawling out of the boxes) in the dress of the day, masked figures, harlequins and actors from the commedia dell’arte. Even the painter is immortalized, drinking a cup of coffee.

After the tour, we wandered over a long covered bridge that was suspended between the rock on which the castle was built and a wooded hill. Here, we could look over the entire town and see the Vltava curled around as if protecting it from the modern world. At the end of the bridge, a long ramp leads into the gardens with their mythological statuary which, like the castle, are slowly being restored. The gem in the garden is the Castle Theatre, built by Josef Adam of Schwanzenberg in 1766 and virtually untouched since. This Baroque pastel beauty still has its original stage mechanism, including a set of 12 back cloths; the only intact 18th-Century theater that rivals it is Drottingholm in Stockholm.

One day last summer, my son announced we were going for a raft ride down the Vltava. When the weather warms, canoes and rafts appear on Czech rivers as thick as mayflies. Cramming our inflatable rubber raft into a bag, we hopped an early morning local bus to Vyssi Brod (about an hour’s ride), just east of Lake Lipno. During the Soviet years, this area was occupied by the military, so even many Czechs are seeing it for the first time.

In Vyssi Brod, we walked up to the ruins of the town monastery and stashed our raft with the gatekeeper. Built in the 12th Century, the monastery has a colorful history and is slowly being restored. It was started by Cistercian monks, and durable walls were added later to protect it from Austrian invaders and to guard the extreme wealth of the Rozmberks. The monastery withstood two attacks by the Hussites and was used as a headquarters by the occupying German SS in World War II. When the Communists closed most of the churches and monasteries in 1950, it became a brewery and barn. With the collapse of Soviet control, many monasteries have been given back to various monastic orders.

In the simple, Gothic monastery church, we attached ourselves to a group of German tourists (so far, tours of the church are given only in German and Czech) for a walk through the vaulted rooms, some with magnificent rose windows. The monastery library was closed when I was there; we were told it has 70,000 volumes and is the second largest library in the Czech Republic.

The church was basically for the use of the monks and the Rozmberks, the last of whom, Petr Vok, died of drugs and drink and is buried in the blue chapel. In the Rozmberk family mausoleum in one part of the monastery, there is one crypt that has never been opened. According to legend, the deceased Rozmberks are sitting erect at a golden table.

After touring the church and then shopping for tomatoes, cheese, bread and the ubiquitous beer for a picnic lunch, we retrieved the raft from the gatekeeper and lowered it into the water for a daylong peaceful float through the Bohemian countryside. Well, peaceful most of the time. We portaged the first few mini-waterfalls and weirs but by late afternoon, our confidence soaring, we just held our breath and with a scream shot through the few remaining dams between us and Cesky Krumlov.

Once you figure out the bus schedules, there are lots of other day trips out of town. One day, Ruda escorted us to Zlata Koruna, one of the most beautiful gothic monasteries in Central Europe, a 20-minute bus ride from Krumlov on the way to Ceske Budejovice.

In Ceske Budejovice, we strolled ancient side streets, visited the baroque town hall with its dragon spouts, took many photos of the octagonal Samson’s Fountain and saw the infamous Bludny kamen (Wandering Stone). This marks the execution spot of 10 young men who were accused of killing the mayor in 1478, but protested their innocence to the end. Legend has it that anyone who steps on the site after 9 p.m. will get forever lost in the surrounding streets.

On another day we hopped the bus for Hluboka nad Vltavou (about 7 miles north of Budejovice) to a past-perfect Tudor Gothic castle. The original 13th-Century castle endured a tug-of-war existence between Catholic and Protestant families. It was the 19th-Century Schwarzenbergs who transformed the fortress into a Czech version of Windsor Castle.

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Each time I return to Cesky Krumlov, I come with apprehension because, while some changes (such as being able to buy good toothpaste) are welcome, others are not. I rather liked CK when it still had its 19th-Century shabbiness.

The Czechs, however, see the changes in a different light. On one of our strolls, one Czech said: “Look at buildings--all pastels now, pale yellow and mint green. A few years go, they were all gray. Everything was gray--buildings, people.”

The Czechs say they will never be gray again.

GUIDEBOOK

Czeching Out Cesky Krumlov

Getting there: Numerous airlines such as Lufthansa, KLM, British Airways and SAS have daily flights from Los Angeles via a gateway city in Europe with connections on to Prague. During the summer months, Delta Airlines has daily, direct flights to Prague with one stop in Frankfurt. On all airlines summer rates range $1,068-$2,022 with prices frequently dropping in September.

From the Central Train Station in Prague, there are eight daily train departures to Cesky Krumlov. Local and express buses also have regular daily departures for CK with changes in Ceske Budejovice. Trains tend to be slower than the bus with longer stops and frequent detours. Both bus and train prices are under $2 for the 3-4 hour trip.

Avis, Hertz and Budget all have rental agencies in Prague, but car rental packages--with the 23% tax, unlimited mileage, collision and theft insurance--are approximately $650 per week for a compact. Although rates are much lower in Germany and Austria, the major car rental firms do not allow vehicles into most of the former Soviet bloc countries because of theft problems.

Getting around: Cesky Krumlov is small enough to walk wherever you want to go and is completely safe day and night. From the train and bus station, taxis can be called and rates are still low (about $1 to town). For most side trips to places such as Vyssi Brod and Zalata Koruna, buses are not luxurious but they are frequent and cheap (about $1 for a one-hour trip.)

Where to stay: Book hotels in advance as they fill up quickly in the summer. The Cesky Krumlov Tourist Service, a block off the main square on Radnicni street, has information on lodgings, including the less expensive but comfortable and attractive pensions.

The Hotel Ruze (Horni 153, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic 38101; from U.S. telephones 011-42-337-2245 or 011-42-337-5481, fax 011-42-337-3881) is a stunning Italian Renaissance structure, once a Jesuit residence, with spectacular views of the city and the Vltava. The most expensive hotel in town; rooms begin around $45 for a double with breakfast, have modern bathrooms and are comparable to other European accommodations in larger cities. Hotel Krumlov (Namesti Svornosti 14, Cesky Krumlov 38101, tel. 011-42-337-2255, fax 011-42-337-3498), in a Gothic house on the main square, is an older hotel with a rambling, homey ambience and Czech antiques in the rooms. Rates start around $25 per night per room with bathroom.

Many seasoned travelers recommend CK’s pensions, often found near the center of town, generally under $20 a night, with clean rooms (some with bath) plus breakfast. Bookings can be made by mail but it’s relatively easy to find a room when you arrive. Most advertise in town with pension and zimmer frei (room available) signs posted on buildings. Best bets are: Pension Anna (on Rooseveltova just off Horni), and Pension Barbakan (Rooseveltova at Horni 27). In the center of town, Dvou Marii (Two Marys) is best known for its cafe right on the river but it also has rooms. There also are many charming pensions off Latran down to the left on V. Jame, near the Budejovicka Gate.

Where to eat: Jelenka, in a parking lot below the castle, has great meals at very reasonable prices, $1.50-$2 per person, not including drinks. Rybarska Basta, just off the main square, has good fish dishes; another local hangout is the Hotel U Mesta Vidne at Latran 78, where you can find traditional Czech pub meals for between 80 cents and $1.50 served in a noisy atmosphere. The Hotel Ruze has the fanciest food in town, with the trout and duck highly recommended.

For more information: Cedok, the former Czechoslovak state tourist agency, though privatized, may still be more into booking rooms than answering questions: Cedok Central European Tours & Travel, 10 East 40th St., Suite 3604, New York 10016; tel. (212) 689-9720; fax: (212) 481-0597. Otherwise, write (requesting tourist information) to the Czech Embassy, 3900 Spring of Freedom St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008. Or consult a travel agent with expertise in Eastern Europe.