In Budějovice
Dominikánský klášter and Piaristické náměstí
On foot 18 min · By car 7 min
Here you reach the very beginnings of Budějovice. Work on the oldest building in town started in 1265 together with the founding of the city. Inside, medieval wall paintings survive, including a St Christopher over ten metres tall.
The monastery with the church of the Presentation of the Virgin stands a hundred metres from the main square and today serves as a cultural centre with summer tours and concerts. On a painting in the cloister Charles IV himself may be depicted, and above the monastery stands the fifty-one-metre Bílá věž. The square in front lies on the site of a former graveyard and is named after the order that only arrived here five hundred years later.
Practical details
- On foot 18 min · By car 7 min
- Opening hours: sezónní: v červenci a srpnu denně, v září o víkendech. Komentované prohlídky v červenci a srpnu v 11:00 a v 15:00
On site
The square stands on the site of a former graveyard; paving from 1995 recalls it — some stones have motifs pointing to that past. Worth looking down — a detail almost nobody knows and nowhere written.
From the south the square is closed by the monastery; on the west a 15th-century polygonal bastion now holds a gallery, and beside it Solnice (story). Opposite the monastery bell tower stands an avenue of Baroque saint statues made between 1739 and 1746 in the workshop of local sculptor Josef Dietrich.
Inside the church the ten-metre St Christopher is the most striking — compare with your own height to grasp the scale. In the transept you see ongoing work: restoration since 2007, what is uncovered and what still waits.
And then there is the frog. A stone frog from legend is set in the wall between presbytery and transept — something concrete to find, there for over seven hundred and fifty years. On the north wall are gargoyles as dragon and frog. With children: find the frog in the wall, both gargoyles, then check whether the frog is climbing to the roof.