Medieval fairy-tale town in a Vltava river loop — castle, bears, and baroque theatre
Český Krumlov is a perfectly preserved Renaissance and Baroque town curled inside a dramatic horseshoe bend of the Vltava River. The castle complex — second-largest in the Czech Republic after Prague — includes a unique Baroque theatre with original 17th-century stage machinery, a castle garden with a cascading fountain, and a moat famously inhabited by brown bears. The UNESCO-listed old town below is a maze of cobbled lanes, painted facades, and riverside cafés. Artists, cyclists, and kayakers crowd the town in summer; in winter it turns into a snow-dusted stage set with barely a tourist in…
First mentioned in 1240, the town grew around a Gothic castle built by the Vítkovci clan above a strategic ford on the Vltava. The Rosenberg family expanded it into a Renaissance palace complex in the 16th century, making Český Krumlov one of the most important centres of power in Bohemia. The Schwarzenberg princes acquired the estate in 1719 and added the Baroque theatre; the town was handed to the state after WWII and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992.