Czech Republic · Old Town
Cesky Krumlov Audio Walking Tour
Castle, theatre, bear moat
Walk Cesky Krumlov inside the horseshoe bend of the Vltava: a castle of forty buildings across five courtyards, a Baroque theatre sealed for two centuries with its machinery intact, bears kept in the moat since the 1500s, and the painter the town once ran out of town.
- Stops
- 9
- Walking time
- 1–1.5 hours
- Distance
- 0.7 km
- Price
- All 9 stops free
The 9 stops
Walk them in order or pick the ones you want. The narration starts when you arrive.
State Castle & Château · Seven centuries, three dynasties
The second-largest castle complex in the Czech Republic — forty buildings across five courtyards on a rocky spur above the river. Three dynasties layered Gothic, Baroque and imperial polish onto one another.
Castle Tower · Painted stones, real power
Those carved stones aren't stone at all — they're 16th-century painted plaster, trompe-l'œil applied by the Rosenbergs to prove they knew what was fashionable in Florence. Climb it for the full river bend.
Baroque Theatre · A working 18th-century time capsule
Built around 1766 and then simply closed — costumes, forty painted backdrops and the original stage machinery left exactly where they stood. One of the most complete Baroque theatres anywhere, and still working.
Castle Garden & Cascade Fountain · Baroque garden with a revolving auditorium
A formal Baroque garden on the plateau above the rooftops, with a cascade fountain and summer pavilion. Its open-air auditorium physically rotates the audience between stages — one of very few left in Europe.
Bear Moat · Heraldry with actual bears
There have been bears in this moat since roughly the 16th century. The Rosenbergs claimed kinship with Italy's Orsini family — orso means bear — and kept live ones as the most literal heraldry imaginable.
St. Vitus Church · Gothic spire, dynastic tomb
The Gothic spire visible from nearly every street, begun in the 14th century, on the promontory facing the castle. The Rosenbergs who built that castle are buried here, in permanent view of it.
Náměstí Svornosti · Concord Square — and a plague column
Concord Square, ringed with pastel façades and centred on a Baroque plague column. Behind the postcard: repeated epidemics, the Thirty Years' War, and the postwar expulsion that emptied and resettled the town.
Egon Schiele Art Centre · Rejected in 1911, celebrated now
A former brewery holding the work of the painter this town threw out. Schiele came in 1911 to paint his mother's birthplace, scandalised it, and left; the museum opened in 1992, the year of the UNESCO listing.
Cloak Bridge · The castle's internal viaduct
Three storeys of arched stone thrown across a ravine between the castle's fourth and fifth courtyards — a private viaduct carrying people and pipes. Stand underneath for the best single view in the complex.
In December
The Advent v Českém Krumlově is built on this route
Advent here happens on one square, under a plague column, below a castle with bears in the moat. See the Český Krumlov Christmas market tour
Cesky Krumlov is coming soon
The tour is written and narrated. It is waiting on store review — leave your email and we will tell you the day it goes live.