Slavonice - The Lutheran Prayer Room

Slavonice is a small quiet town in the area of Czech Canada on the Austrian border. The town isn't on most tourists' itinerary, which is a shame for the tourists but good for those of us in the know. The town is decorated with spectacular Renaissance sgraffito, but for me the gems in the town are to be found inside the buildings which crowd round the town's two adjoined squares. Step through any number of archways and you will find yourself in entrance halls with wonderful ornately ribbed ceilings.

I recommend visiting the tourist information centre, if for no other reason than to admire the wall decorations. But best of all is a house where one of the rooms was used as a Lutheran chapel in the very early days of Protestantism. Three of the four walls are decorated with scenes of the end of the Last Judgement. The iconography is fascinating with the pope clearly depicted as the anti-Christ. It is not hard to see that to the worshipers who sat in that room four and a half centuries ago the day of Judgement was nigh.

The house is now a small museum and bed and breakfast. It was very strange spending the night in a museum, although I am pleased to say that you do not sleep in a room with demons dragging souls off to hell on the walls. Now that really would be spooky.

The museum is only open in the peak summer months, but can be visited by prior appointment on other months via the website http://www.evagiordanova.cz/en/modlitebna. You can also book accommodation there too.

Other parts - 1 - Litomysl

Over the last four days I have been up in the north visiting Bohemian Switzerland, the Bohemian Paradise area, and Litomysl, and I managed to call in on Hlinsko on the way back too. I have taken loads of photos and so over the next few posts I thought I would do some photographic blogposts about what I've seen. So let us begin with Litomysl.

Litomysl is like Cesky Krumlov on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list. It has a wonderful arcaded square, the highlight in which is for me the Knights House (now used as a gallery). The facade of the house is decorated with a series of carved knights.

Litomysl's Renaissance Palace is covered with the most incredible sgraffito decoration. The decoration on the outside is just amazing:

But the work on the inner wall of the courtyard is even more spectacular and include this portrayal of the Battle of the Malvian Bridge.

 I cannot do justice to the Palace and its decoration in this blog, you will just have to visit Litomysl yourself.

Litomysl's other main claim to fame is that it is the birthplace of Czech composer - Smetana. The town plays host to a major international music festival in June - the Smetanova. I came across this fountain - currently dry for the winter - in which children were playing. What a photograph cannot portray is the fact that speakers built into the wall were playing music by Smetana.

Prachatice

As part of my research for the Archaeological Society trip to South Bohemia (see previous post) it was interesting to return to Prachatice the other day. It has been at least two years since I went there last and quite a bit of restoration has been taking place, including to the decoration on the renaissance buildings around the town square. Many have created using sgraffito, a process by which the design is scratched (hence the name) into the plaster.

I don't usually do posts in which the main content is photos, but it seems appropriate here. I hope you enjoy them.

Olsina

When I was first looking for a place to buy, I looked at a derelict cottage on the edge of the lake at Olsina. The two storey ruin is still there, getting more and more derelict by the day. It turns out that the cottage is just in the militarised zone and so, as I suspected at the time, is very difficult to buy, even for a Czech. But the cottage's position is delightful – the lake laps the beach a few yards from the house and the natural amphitheatre of hills is reflected in the mirror of water. The place is so peaceful, there is no noise but the rustle of leaves and the occasional train passing. You can travel by train there, getting off at Hodnov.

The lake like so many around here is not a natural one. It is a result of the Czech love of carp flesh. Built in the 15^th Century to provide fish for the Zlata Koruna monastery, the lake then passed into the possession of the Rozmberk family. Every two years the lake is emptied of water in order to harvest the fish. The lake covers some 133 hectares and is accessible only at its south eastern end. Here you will find an interesting example of a large Renaissance house built to accommodate the man charged with looking after the lake. The building is in a sorry state with a large crack in one wall, but there are signs that at long last this may be about to be remedied. A fellow Brit has bought a smaller house closeby. For more on her experiences and efforts to restore the house visit http://krumlovbrit.blogspot.com.

The Sad Story of the Alchemist's House

If you walk down the Siroka - the market street in Cesky Krumlov in which you will find the Egon Schiele Art Centrum - you will see the Alchemist's House. This wonderful renaissance house is the most perfect example of burgher home in the town and indeed anywhere. Its association with the alchemist Anton Michael of Ebbersbach, a former resident, gives the house its local name and this in turn gave a group of local people the idea for a use for the building - the creation of an alchemy museum.

The museum would have covered the history of alchemy both in Krumlov and further afield, and it would have looked at alchemy's legacy - to science (the alchemists developed many of the early scientific methods) and to literature. It was a perfect idea for Cesky Krumlov, commercially attractive and appropriate. It also would have meant the restoration of the building - sensitive restoration because the people involved in developing the project cared and still do care about the building. The building was owned by the "Cesky Krumlov Development Fund". You can find out what it claims to be doing on the web - that it was protecting the heritage and developing the town for the benefit of local people and future generations. Let us decide from its behaviour over the Alchemist's House whether this is the case.

The proposers of the Alchemy Museum concept were encouraged to work up their business plans and to look for funding. If they did this, they were told, they would get the house. So they set about doing just that. Then they heard that the house had been sold behind their backs to a hotel developer. It is obvious that a hotel conversion of this building is inappropriate. As I indicated in my previous post hotels require changes to the internal fabric of the building incompatible with heritage conservation concerns. Criticism of the hotel proposals has come from national and regional conservation bodies. Does the Development Fund listen? Well it hasn't yet.

Anton Michael of Ebbersbach was an unethical charlatan, who had claimed to be able to grow gold coins by watering them. The Development Fund has found another way to grow gold!