Local tips
Besednické vltavíny
By car 31 min
Besednice is known for moldavites with exceptionally sculptured surfaces, among the most valued by collectors worldwide. The natural site itself is protected and digging is forbidden. You can dig your own legally at the experience mine by the village.
Besednice lies twenty kilometres south of Budějovice, and collectors call the local stones hedgehogs. Digging on the protected site risks a fine and, if repeated, even prison. Experience mining is run by the Český Krumlov Moldavite Museum: a group of six to eight people search with hand tools in the original layer, and each takes home five grams of moldavite. The meeting point is sent by the museum only after booking.
Practical details
- By car 31 min
On site
On the monument itself on the Velký kámen slope you mainly see what diggers left — pits and disturbed soil. Unpleasant but instructive: on a site protected for scientific value much terrain is dug up. Without digging nothing is found here, so searching is pointless.
At the legal mine you work with a pick in gravel sand and search in the exposure. Moldavite shows by translucency — green glass unlike surrounding stone. Local pieces can be compared with the case in Jihočeské muzeum (story) or the Moldavite Museum in Český Krumlov.