Czech castles and historic sites: 59 places to visit

Founded by Charles IV in 1348 to guard the imperial regalia and holy relics. The Chapel of the Holy Cross is inlaid with semi-precious stones and 129 panel paintings.

A cathedral-scale Gothic church funded by silver miners and begun in 1388. Silver once made Kutná Hora the second town of the kingdom (UNESCO).

A small chapel decorated with the bones of some 40,000 people, arranged into a chandelier and a coat of arms by woodcarver František Rint in 1870.

The village razed by the Nazis in June 1942 in revenge for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. The memorial includes a bronze sculpture of 82 children.

One of the most important Marian pilgrimage sites in Bohemia: a Baroque complex on a hill above Příbram, built around a medieval statue of the Virgin and reached by a long covered stairway from the town.

A Baroque church built against a limestone cliff in the Bohemian Karst, over the cave where, legend says, Ivan, the first Czech hermit, lived in the 9th century. A steep path climbs to the cross on top of the rock for a view down the valley.

Legend says an army of knights led by St Wenceslas sleeps inside the hill and will ride out when the Czech lands are in their greatest need. A short climb through beech woods leads to a wooden lookout tower on the summit of Velký Blaník.

The tallest menhir in Czechia, about three and a half metres of stone standing alone in the fields near Klobuky. Local legend says it moves one step closer to the village church with every ring of the bell – and when it gets there, the world will end.

The car maker's museum on the site where Laurin & Klement started out building bicycles in 1895: cars from the first voiturettes to rally Fabias, and a restoration workshop you can look into. Tours of the plant next door can be booked.

The Czech Railways museum in a former engine shed of the Buštěhrad Railway, with the country's largest collection of steam locomotives, rides on a narrow-gauge line and steam trains on some weekends.

Příbram mined silver for centuries and uranium after the war. In Březové Hory you ride a mine train into the Ševčin adit and walk through headframes, engine houses and miners' cottages.

The Liechtensteins' Neo-Gothic summer residence at the heart of the Lednice–Valtice Cultural Landscape (UNESCO), one of the largest designed landscapes in Europe. Its park hides a minaret over 60 m tall.

A memorial on Pratzen Heights to the fallen of the 1805 Battle of Austerlitz, the Battle of the Three Emperors.

Mies van der Rohe's functionalist masterpiece in Brno, completed in 1930, with an onyx wall and windows that sink into the floor. Book tours well in advance.

A 13th-century royal castle later turned into a feared Habsburg prison; visitors can walk through the casemates.

A Gothic castle on a rock spur that was never conquered and has kept its medieval look.

Under St James' Church lie the bones of an estimated 50,000 people from the old town cemetery. Rediscovered in 2001 and opened in 2012, it is said to be the second-largest ossuary in Europe after the Paris catacombs.

The Augustinian abbey in Old Brno where Gregor Mendel crossed peas and worked out the laws of heredity: his story, the garden where he grew them, and the abbey's basilica and library on guided tours.

Seat of Czech rulers for over a thousand years and today of the president, often cited as the largest ancient castle complex in the world. St. Vitus Cathedral guards the Crown Jewels.

Begun in 1357 under Charles IV, this Gothic bridge links the Old Town and Malá Strana. Thirty Baroque statues line its parapets.

The legendary seat of the first Czech princes on a rock above the Vltava. Its cemetery holds Dvořák, Smetana and Mucha.

A small wax-coated statue of the Infant Jesus, brought from Spain and given to the Carmelites in 1628, draws pilgrims from all over the world to the Church of Our Lady Victorious in Malá Strana. Its robes are changed through the church year from a wardrobe of more than a hundred.

Czechia's largest technical museum, on Letná: a great transport hall of locomotives, cars and motorbikes with aircraft hanging overhead, plus astronomy, photography, printing and a mine in the basement.

One of Europe's largest aviation museums, on a working military airfield on the edge of Prague: aircraft from World War I biplanes to Cold War jets, in hangars and out on the grass. Entry is free.

An arcaded Renaissance chateau covered in more than 8,000 sgraffito 'bricks', no two alike. Composer Bedřich Smetana was born in its brewery.

One of the oldest stud farms in the world, breeding the ceremonial Kladruber horse since 1579. UNESCO since 2019.

A Baroque pilgrimage monastery on a hill above Králíky, founded by Bishop Tobiáš Becker to fulfil a childhood vow; the foundation stone was laid in 1706. A tree-lined avenue with the Stations of the Cross climbs to the church and its cloisters, with views to the Králický Sněžník massif.

An open-air museum of the Vysočina uplands near Hlinsko: timber farmhouses, barns and a water-powered mill and sawmill, put back to work on demonstration days.

Czech puppetry is on UNESCO's heritage list, and this museum in Chrudim's Renaissance Mydlář House holds thousands of puppets, from travelling marionette theatres to figures from around the world.

The country's second-largest castle complex, above a bend of the Vltava; its Baroque theatre keeps its original stage machinery. UNESCO since 1992.

A South Bohemian village of Rural Baroque farmhouses around a green, preserved almost unchanged from the 19th century. UNESCO since 1998.

Rebuilt by the Schwarzenbergs in the 19th century in the style of Windsor Castle, with lavish interiors and an English park.

Founded by the radical Hussites in 1420 and named after the biblical Mount Tabor. Tunnels run beneath the old town.

A 17th-century pilgrimage village south of České Budějovice: a copy of the Holy House of Loreto, begun in 1648, and a Way of the Cross of 25 chapels winding about 5 km through the fields and woods around Římov.

Residence of the Olomouc archbishops with the Flower Garden and Chateau Garden, all UNESCO-listed. The picture gallery holds Titian's Apollo and Marsyas.

One of the Czech lands' most important pilgrimage sites, linked with St Methodius and Great Moravia: a Cistercian monastery founded in 1205 and a vast Baroque basilica that Pope John Paul II visited in 1990. Thousands come for the feast of Sts Cyril and Methodius on 5 July.

A hilltop basilica in the Hostýn Hills, among Moravia's most visited pilgrimage sites. Legend says the Virgin Mary saved people sheltering here from the Tatars in 1241 with a bolt of lightning; the Way of the Cross up the slope was designed in folk Art Nouveau style by Dušan Jurkovič.

Central Europe's oldest open-air museum, founded in 1925: a wooden town square, a Wallachian village on the hillside and a valley of working water mills, with crafts and folk festivals through the season. Radhošť is just above.

Two of Baťa's concrete factory blocks turned into a museum, gallery and library: the story of the shoe empire that built a modern company town, and the travels of Hanzelka and Zikmund. Next door, the Baťa skyscraper keeps its director's office in a lift.

A castle on a rock in a tight bend of the Ohře, once called the key to the Kingdom of Bohemia.

A Baroque pilgrimage church near Sokolov looked after by the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star, the order founded by St Agnes of Bohemia. The present church and cloisters were built around 1700, probably to a design by Christoph Dientzenhofer.

Moser has made lead-free crystal in Karlovy Vary since 1857, for royal courts and presidents. The visitor centre has a museum of its glass and a tour of the hot shop, where the glassmakers blow and shape it by hand.

Two towers on volcanic basalt plugs, nicknamed Baba and Panna, the emblem of Bohemian Paradise.

One of the oldest pilgrimage sites in Bohemia, at the foot of the Jizera Mountains: legend dates it to 1211, and the vast Baroque basilica was consecrated in 1725. A small 14th-century statue of the Virgin still stands on the high altar.

A glassworks in the Krkonoše making glass since 1712: watch it blown from a gallery above the furnaces, then visit the glass museum – and the brewpub in the same hall, where a glass wall looks onto the glassmakers.

A former coal mine and ironworks turned cultural district, with a viewpoint at the top of Blast Furnace No. 1.

The sacred mountain of the Beskydy: the ridge path from Pustevny passes a statue of the pagan god Radegast, and the summit has a wooden chapel of Sts Cyril and Methodius from the 1890s. Legends of old gods and Christian missionaries meet here.

Kopřivnice has built vehicles since 1850. The museum shows Tatra's streamlined saloons and racing cars and the Präsident of 1897, the first car made in central Europe; the lorries have their own museum across town.

A 35-metre Baroque column completed in 1754, the largest Baroque sculptural group in Central Europe. UNESCO since 2000.

A fairy-tale castle rebuilt around 1900 for the Teutonic Order and a favourite filming location.

A Baroque pilgrimage basilica on a hill above Olomouc, built from 1669 where, legend says, a local burgher saw a vision of the Virgin. Pope John Paul II visited in 1995 and made it a minor basilica; the terrace looks out over the Haná plain.

A long Renaissance square lined with arcades and pastel gables, rebuilt after a fire in 1530. UNESCO since 1992.

Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel's star-shaped church, built from 1719, is designed around the number five, after the five stars of the saint's legend. UNESCO since 1994.

The only Jewish monument outside Israel listed by UNESCO in its own right, together with the Romanesque-Gothic Basilica of St. Procopius.

Baroque sculptures carved straight into sandstone boulders in a forest near Kuks: in the 1720s Matthias Bernard Braun cut a Nativity scene, hermits and saints into the rock for Count Franz Anton Sporck. A rare open-air gallery, on UNESCO's tentative list.

Home of Probošt's mechanical nativity scene, carved by a local carpenter and his friends over some forty years and still set in motion by its original mechanism – a national cultural monument, with some 400 more nativity scenes around it.

An 18th-century fortress that the Nazis turned into a Gestapo prison, next to the Terezín ghetto. Today a memorial to the victims.

The lone hill rising from the Elbe plain where, legend says, Forefather Čech looked out over the land and claimed it for his people. On the summit stands the Romanesque Rotunda of St George, rebuilt in 1126.

A 14th-century village church abandoned after part of the ceiling fell during a funeral in 1968. In 2012 the artist Jakub Hadrava filled the pews with 32 ghostly plaster figures of the former parishioners, and the visitors they drew have paid for a new roof.