Brno on Stage

Brno's Villa Quarter

153 min7.5 km15 zastávok

On the wooded slopes west of the centre — Pisárky and the Masaryk Quarter — Brno's interwar elite built the densest concentration of modernist villas in the country. This walk threads fifteen of them: the two you can go inside (Dušan Jurkovič's Art-Nouveau house and Ernst Wiesner's purist Vila Stiassni, both now museums), the 1928 Nový dům colony that was Brno's answer to Stuttgart's Weissenhof, the only Czech house in MoMA's 1932 "International Style" show, and a string of homes by Wiesner, Bohuslav Fuchs, Jiří Kroha and Jindřich Kumpošt for the textile magnates who once lived here. Roughly three hours on foot through one leafy hillside quarter.

Brno Central Cemetery: Legends in Stone

62 min2.3 km9 zastávok

Walk through Ústřední hřbitov, Brno's vast Central Cemetery, to meet the people who built the city's identity: Gregor Mendel, composer Leoš Janáček, architect Bohuslav Fuchs, Brno's first Czech mayor, the founder of its public library, a Moravian Karst explorer, one of Czechoslovakia's great postwar poets, the founder of Czech Slavic studies, and the man who opened Brno's first Czech bookshop, alongside memorials to civic and wartime sacrifice and Ernst Wiesner's Functionalist crematorium.

The Story of Brno

58 min2.5 km7 zastávok

A walk through eight centuries of Brno's history, from its medieval founding to the fortress that became one of the Habsburg Empire's most feared prisons. This walk visits the city's Gothic cathedral and Old Town Hall, the last surviving fragment of the medieval city walls, the civic square where a column still marks a devastating 17th-century plague and where both world wars left their mark, a statue of the medieval margrave who once ruled the city, a Gothic church built over a vast underground ossuary, and Špilberk Castle, whose walls hold the story of a legendary siege and two centuries as a political prison. Seven stops through Brno's historic core, roughly eighty minutes on foot.

From Loom to Tugendhat

76 min3.9 km7 zastávok

For two centuries Brno was the Moravian Manchester, a city that dressed an empire in fine wool. This walk follows the money: from Freedom Square, where the first cloth manufacturer lived, past the Offermann house and the old factory quarter along Křenová and Cejl, where weavers worked, trained and went on strike, then up to Černá Pole and two houses of one textile family, ending at Vila Tugendhat. Start on Freedom Square, a short walk from the main railway station or any central tram stop.

Mikulov

Mikulov: Castle, Cellars and the Moravian Jerusalem

62 min2.8 km7 zastávok

Mikulov sits on the last limestone hills before the Austrian border, and for four centuries it was two towns at once: the seat of the Dietrichstein princes, who ruled Moravia from the castle on the rock, and Nikolsburg, home to the chief rabbis of Moravia and one of the most important Jewish communities in Central Europe. This walk climbs to the castle and its legendary wine barrel, crosses the arcaded main square to the Dietrichstein burial vault, turns into the old Jewish town for the Upper Synagogue and the terraced cemetery above it, takes in the view from Goat Hill, and ends among the limestone crags of the Turold quarry-park. Seven stops, about an hour on foot.

Třebíč

Třebíč's Jewish Quarter

37 min1.2 km4 zastávky

Walk the narrow lanes of Zámostí, Třebíč's UNESCO-listed former Jewish quarter — one of Europe's best-preserved Jewish urban ensembles, and the only Jewish monument outside Israel on the World Heritage list. Starting at the Basilica of St. Procopius, the walk crosses into the quarter's self-governing streets, visits the Rear Synagogue and Seligmann-Bauer's preserved household, and climbs to the hillside Jewish cemetery, the community's own resting place, to close.

Znojmo

Best of Znojmo

55 min1.0 km5 zastávok

Walk through the compact old town of Znojmo, a medieval royal town on a rocky spur above the Dyje River gorge. The tour starts at Vlkova Tower, a medieval tower on the town walls at the lower corner of Masaryk Square, and climbs the square to the Gothic Town Hall Tower, above the tunnels of the Znojmo Underground. It continues to St Nicholas' Church and the Karolina Gate viewpoint, passes the old Minorite monastery, and ends at the castle and the Romanesque Rotunda of St Catherine. Five stops, about one kilometre, roughly an hour.

Kroměříž

Kroměříž: The Archbishops' Garden City

95 min3.1 km10 zastávok

Kroměříž is a small Moravian town with an outsized inheritance: for centuries it was the summer seat of the Bishops and Archbishops of Olomouc, who turned it into a garden city of palaces, churches, and parks now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This walk crosses town from the Baroque Flower Garden — its colonnade, Rotunda, and maze — through the arcaded main square and two churches, to the Archbishop's Château, finishing with a stroll into the landscape park behind it. Ten stops across about three kilometres, tracing how one dynasty of churchmen shaped an entire town.

Olomouc

The Fountains of Olomouc

37 min1.5 km5 zastávok

Meet Olomouc's six baroque water gods — and the playful modern outsider who joined them in 2002 — on a walk through the historic centre's two grand squares. Vain Caesar and mighty Hercules hold court outside the Town Hall; feuding Neptune and Jupiter face off on the Lower Square; quick-footed Mercury and the sea-god Triton mind their own corners nearby. Along the way, you'll also pass the UNESCO-listed Holy Trinity Column, the whimsical Astronomical Clock, and the twin-spired Cathedral of St. Wenceslas.

Litomyšl

Best of Litomyšl

60 min1.2 km7 zastávok

A compact walk through Litomyšl, the East Bohemian town where the composer Bedřich Smetana was born. You start at his monument at the lower end of the long arcaded Smetana Square and walk up through it. Then you climb gently to the castle hill: the Gothic church of the town's first monastery, the terraced Monastery Gardens, the Baroque Piarist church, the brewery flat where Smetana was born, and finally the UNESCO-listed Renaissance château with its sgraffito walls. The start is about ten minutes on foot from the railway station.