Got my Budget rent a car in Prague, and tried to work the GPS. The guy who handed over the car couldn’t speak English. Grrr. Anyway, using my Iphone which wasn’t connected to Internet, but nevertheless showed me where I was in the city…managed to get myself on a highway out of Prague to Cesky Krumlov, some 170kms away. When I arrived, discovered I’d have to park my car and walk into town, taking only what I could carry to the hotel. Really happy with the boutique hotel that I had chosen….only about 700m from car park, delightful Czech cooking and super friendly staff. The green/red ceramic looking thing to the right, is a heater – they stoke a fire inside and it keeps you warm over winter months, a “Pech”, its called.
With a river looping around twice, you can’t help but walk around in circles all day in amazement, as I did, certainly the first afternoon.
Cesky Krumlov (“crooked meadow” after a bend of the Vltava river), settlement arose beneath the castle, which was erected from about 1240 onwards by a local branch of the noble Vitkovki family, decendants of Witiko of Prcice, whose ‘line’ eventually ran out!
Krumlov was then ruled by the following family sequence: Rosenbergs, Hapsburgs, Eggenbergs and Schwartzenbergs (1719-1945).
Cesky Krumlov was part of the German-Austrian Bohemian Forest Region, but by the end of 1918, the Czechoslovak army occupied the region. In 1938 it was annexed by Nazi Germany under the Munich Agreement. After WW2, the town’s longstanding German speaking population was expelled and it was returned to Czechoslovakia. During the communist era, historic Krumlov fell into disrepair, but since the Velvet Revolution of 1989 much of the town’s former beauty has been restored. Yay ?!! 
St Vitus Church, lacked the capacity to serve the needs of the growing population of the capital residential town of the Rosenbergs. So Peter 1 von Rosenberg looked after its reconstruction between 1407 and 1439. Baroque tower, neo gothic interiors that are rich both in design and in material used.
The Monastery of the Order of the Knights of the Red Star, was founded in 1350 at the initiative of the Krumlov ruler Peter I of Rosenberg and his wife Kateřina as a common monastery of Minorites and Clare nuns. From the end of the 14th century, the complex also included a house for lay religious women, called “beguines“. The stay of the Clare nuns was brought to an end by reforms of Emperor Joseph II in 1785, but the Minorites stayed in the monastery until as late as 1950. After that the monastery premises were used for secular purposes. Incredible Baroque church and chapel.
A pear and nut strudel for lunch! Delicious.
And a visit to see an Egon Schiele exhibition (a protege of Gustav Klimt’s), of paintings done when he visited Cesky Krumlov from Vienna. His work is noted for its intensity, an early exponent of Expressionism, so sad he died at 28 from flu. 
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