Three days in Český Krumlov: everyone else comes for the day, which is the mistake
Two nights in the old town: the museum and the hill above the river on arrival, a full day at the castle and on the water, and a last morning with Egon Schiele.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Český Krumlov
- Places
- 7 across 3 days
The Vltava does something strange here. It comes down out of the Šumava hills, loops back on itself twice, and leaves a rock in the middle with a town on it and a castle on the ridge above. Nothing much has been added since the eighteenth century, which is the whole reason the place is on the UNESCO list and the reason several thousand people a day arrive to photograph it.
Almost all of them leave again. Krumlov is three hours from Prague and squarely on the coach circuit, so between ten and five the lanes are a slow-moving queue and the restaurants on the square charge accordingly. By seven in the evening the town belongs to the fourteen thousand people who live here, and it is a completely different place: lit, quiet, and small enough to walk end to end in twenty minutes.
Two nights is what it takes to see that happen twice. There is a full day of castle, a river you can shoot two weirs on without leaving the centre, and a painter with a difficult local reputation, and there is not a great deal more, which is precisely the right amount for three days.
Highlights
- The painted Renaissance tower over the castle, and the view down onto the roofs from the top of it
- A baroque theatre with its original stage machinery still working, one of very few left anywhere
- Floating the Vltava right through the old town on a rubber raft, with people waving down from the bridges
- Bears in the castle moat, kept there since the sixteenth century
- The old town after the last coach leaves, which is the reason to stay the night
Where to stay
Český Krumlov, two nights
Fourteen thousand six hundred people live here, and in high summer the visitors outnumber them. The town grew up under the Lords of Rožmberk, who ran southern Bohemia from the castle for three hundred years, and then simply stopped growing, which is why the street plan and most of the façades are still the ones drawn in the eighteenth century.
Stay inside the loop of the river if you can. The far bank below the castle is quieter and cheaper and five minutes' walk from everything; the hillside above the station is neither.
Day by day
Day 1 in Český Krumlov
The museum, the town, and the hill above the river
Arrive, drop your bag and start with the small museum on the way up from the square, which sounds like a dutiful opening and is not. On the top floor is a ceramic model of the whole town as it stood around 1800, with eight towers and spires that are no longer there, and everything you walk past for the next two days makes more sense for having seen it.
Then wander without a plan. This is the one town where getting lost is the recommended activity: the lanes are short, the river is never more than a minute away, and every third corner opens onto the castle above you.
Save the last hour of light for the climb up the far side. A line of small chapels marks the way, and from the top the town sits below in its loop with the castle strung along the ridge behind. Come down for dinner in the lanes below the square.
- 15:00
Regional Museum
CultureThree floors on Bohemian furniture, local archaeology and the Celtic settlement that predates the town, and the scale model of Krumlov around 1800 on the top floor. Half an hour, and the best possible orientation before you walk anywhere.
.jpg%3Fwidth%3D500)
- 17:30
Chapel on the Mountain of the Cross
ReligiousA stations-of-the-cross path climbing the hill east of the river to a small chapel at the top. Twenty minutes up, steep in places, and the classic view of the whole town in its river loop with the castle above it. Best in the hour before sunset.
- 20:00
Krčma v Šatlavské
EatA tavern in the old jailhouse, with meat grilled over an open fire and long benches. Touristy at peak hours and very good outside them, and the onion soup in a bread bowl is the thing to order.
With more time: If you land early, the disused graphite mine just outside the centre runs tours where you are given a helmet and taken underground on a miners' train. It is an odd, unglamorous and rather good hour, and almost nobody on a day trip has time for it.
Day 2 in Český Krumlov
The castle, the gardens, and the river through the middle of town
The castle is the second largest complex in the country after Prague's, which surprises people who have looked at the size of the town. Go up through the first courtyard early, before the tours start, and look into the moat: there have been bears in it since the Rožmberks began keeping them in the sixteenth century, on the strength of an invented family connection to an Italian noble house with a bear on its arms.
Take one guided route inside rather than trying to do them all, and if you take only one thing beyond that, make it the theatre. It was built in the 1680s and rebuilt in the 1760s and it still has its original scenery, machinery and stage effects, which is true of almost nowhere else. To protect it, the number of visitors a year is capped and performances are extremely rare.
Beyond the castle a long covered bridge on several tiers leads to the gardens, which are big, formal and free, and where the crowds thin out to almost nothing.
Then get on the water. The stretch through the town takes a couple of hours in a raft or a canoe, includes two small weirs that you shoot rather than portage, and gives you the one view of Krumlov that nobody standing on a bridge has.
- 09:00
Český Krumlov State Castle and Chateau
VisitA castle, a chateau and forty buildings between them, on a rock above the river. The painted Renaissance tower is the thing to climb, the baroque theatre is the thing to book, and the courtyards and the bear moat cost nothing to walk through.
- 13:30
chateau gardens
VisitEleven hectares of formal garden on the ridge behind the castle, reached over the tiered covered bridge. Free, open all day, and the quietest place in Krumlov at two in the afternoon.
- 15:30
Maleček Boat Rentals
VisitBoats, rafts and a guided wooden-raft trip, with commentary in English. The float through the historic centre is about two hours and needs no experience at all; they drive you to the start and collect you at the end.
With more time: There is an open-air theatre in the chateau garden whose entire auditorium turns on a base to face each new scene, built in the 1950s and still used for summer opera and drama. Tickets are worth chasing if your dates line up, and the argument about whether a rotating steel grandstand belongs in a UNESCO garden has been running for decades.
Day 3 in Český Krumlov
Egon Schiele, the monasteries, and out
Krumlov's other famous resident lasted a matter of months. Egon Schiele came in 1911 because his mother was born here, painted the town as a stack of crooked dark houses in the pictures he called Dead City, hired local girls as models, and was run out by the townspeople. The gallery that now carries his name is the town's best building after the castle.
The monastery complex on the way back to the gate makes the other half of the morning: three orders on one site, restored a decade ago, with workshops and gardens and hardly anybody in it.
Then the bus or the train. Leave time to walk the main street once more in the direction you have not walked it.
- 09:30
Egon Schiele Centrum Museum
CultureA converted brewery holding a permanent room on Schiele's time here and rotating shows of twentieth century and contemporary work. Bigger and better than a town this size has any right to, and about ninety minutes.
- 11:30
Český Krumlov Monasteries
ReligiousThe Minorite and Poor Clares houses on Latrán, restored and opened as workshops, exhibitions and gardens. Quiet, cheap, and a good last hour before the bus.
- 12:45
Lunch before you go
EatEat on Latrán rather than the square. The prices drop noticeably the moment you are out from under the castle.
With more time: With a car or an extra afternoon, the Cistercian abbey at Zlatá Koruna is fifteen minutes downriver, founded in the thirteenth century and one of the best preserved of its kind in Central Europe. It is also a reasonable finishing point for a paddle from Krumlov.
Before you go
Getting in
There is a direct express from Prague once a day that takes just under three hours, and otherwise you change at České Budějovice, which brings the journey to somewhere between three and four hours. Buy the two legs separately: the local trains south of Budějovice are run by a different operator and one through ticket does not exist.
Coaches are faster, cheaper and run all day from Prague, which is why most people use them. Whichever you take, note that the railway station sits on the hillside above the town rather than in it, a steep fifteen minutes from the square, and there is a local bus if you are carrying anything.
Getting around
On foot, and only on foot. The centre is a knot of cobbled lanes on a rock, closed to traffic and impossible to drive in anyway. Walking from the outer gate through the square and across to the far bank takes an hour with stops and fifteen minutes without.
The cobbles are large, rounded and slippery in the wet, and there are steps everywhere. Wheeled luggage is a genuine nuisance here, which is worth knowing before you book somewhere at the top of the hill.
Timing the day
The coach groups arrive from mid morning and are gone by late afternoon, and everything about the town improves either side of that. The castle courtyards are free to walk through and are at their best before nine; the square is worth crossing at ten at night when it is lit and empty.
The castle interiors are guided only and the tours run to a timetable, in Czech with English texts or in English at set times. Book the English tour ahead in summer, and book the baroque theatre well ahead in any season: it takes small groups and runs on a short season.
Eating
The square and the streets leading off the castle are priced for people who will eat here once. The cooking is not bad, it is just twice what it needs to be, and the same money three lanes away buys a considerably better dinner.
The local speciality is medieval-tavern theatre: grilled meat, open fires, benches and no cutlery to speak of. It sounds like a tourist trap and one or two of them are exactly that, though the older ones are genuinely good and full of locals on a Tuesday.
Krumlov gets described as a film set, usually by people who saw it at noon in August with four hundred others. That is a fair account of the middle of the day and a poor one of the town.
Stay two nights, walk the lanes at ten in the evening, and the reason it is on every list becomes obvious.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Can I do Český Krumlov as a day trip from Prague?
- You can and thousands of people do, and it is the least good version of the town. Three hours each way leaves about four hours here, all of them in the busiest part of the day, and you miss the empty evening that is the reason the place is worth the journey.
- Is three days too long?
- Not if you use the river and the hills. The town itself is a day and a half; the raft trip, the walk up to the chapel and the abbey downstream are what fill the rest, and none of them is padding. Anyone in a hurry can cut this to two days by dropping the third morning.
- What has to be booked?
- The baroque theatre, which admits a limited number of visitors each year and sells out. The English-language castle tours in July and August. Everything else, including the boats, can be arranged on the day.
- When is it worst for crowds?
- July and August, between ten and five, and any weekend in December when the markets are on. May, June and September are much easier, and a weekday in early spring is close to having the place to yourself.
- Is it a good base for southern Bohemia?
- A reasonable one. České Budějovice and its enormous square are forty minutes north, the Lipno reservoir and the Šumava forest half an hour west, and the Austrian border is close enough that Linz is an easy day out.
- Can I change it?
- Yes. Open it in your account and it becomes an ordinary trip: move a day, add the tours you have booked, drop whatever does not appeal.