🇨🇿 Czechia · Southern and northern Bohemia
Some towns seem to have stopped in time, and Český Krumlov is one of them. Wedged into a tight bend of the Vltava river, its medieval core unfolds into a maze of cobbled lanes, red-roofed houses and painted façades, all crowned by one of the largest and most spectacular castles in central Europe, with its unmistakable Round Tower decorated in coloured sgraffito. From any viewpoint the whole — the river hugging the town, the red roofs, the tower watching over everything — makes one of the most perfect pictures in the Czech Republic.
It is no accident that UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1992. Český Krumlov keeps its layout and its fourteenth- to seventeenth-century architecture almost intact, the fruit of the splendour of the noble families that governed it: the Rožmberks (Rosenbergs), with their five-petalled rose emblem seen everywhere, and later the Eggenbergs and the Schwarzenbergs. Walking its streets is a journey into Bohemian Gothic and Renaissance, among craft workshops, beer halls, cafés and corners that invite you to get lost.
This guide covers Český Krumlov with a practical, warm eye: how to arrive from Prague or České Budějovice, how to visit the enormous castle and its surprising Baroque Theatre, where to find the best viewpoints over the river bend, how to paddle down the river by canoe and how to escape the crowds that arrive at midday. It is one of those places that deserves, if you can, an overnight stay: once the tour buses leave, the town recovers its quiet magic.
Český Krumlov grew up around its castle, raised in about the middle of the thirteenth century by the Vítkovci family at a strategic point above a bend of the Vltava river, where trade routes met. The name 'Krumlov' probably derives from the German 'Krumme Aue' ('curved meadow' or 'meadow in the bend'), a reference to the shape of the loop. From 1302 the town and the castle passed into the hands of the powerful Rožmberks (Rosenbergs), under whose rule — which lasted almost three centuries — Český Krumlov lived its greatest age: it became one of the most important noble residences in Bohemia, the castle was enlarged in Renaissance style and the town flourished on trade, crafts and silver mining in the region. The Rožmberks' emblem of a red five-petalled rose became the symbol of the town. In 1602 the last Rožmberk sold the estate to the emperor Rudolf II, and it later passed to the Eggenberg family and, in the eighteenth century, to the Schwarzenbergs, who left their baroque mark, including the castle's extraordinary Baroque Theatre. For centuries the population was mostly German-speaking. After the First World War it became part of Czechoslovakia; in 1938 it was annexed by Nazi Germany and, after the Second World War, the German-speaking population was expelled. During the communist period the town decayed, but from 1989 it was carefully restored. In 1992 UNESCO inscribed its historic centre as a World Heritage Site, and today it is one of the most visited destinations in the country. The full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓From the ponds and castles of the Rožmberks in the south — Český Krumlov, České Budějovice, Třeboň — to the textile Sudetenland of Liberec and the sandstone canyons of Bohemian Switzerland in the north: the Bohemia of the great noble houses and of the borderlands.
Read the history of Southern and northern Bohemia →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The history of Český Krumlov begins, like that of so many medieval towns, with a castle. Around the first half of the thirteenth century, the powerful Vítkovci family (the Witigonen), one of the most important noble lines in South Bohemia, raised a fortress at a strategic point: a rocky spur above a tight bend of the Vltava river, where old trade routes linking Bohemia with Austria and the south of the continent crossed. The first written mention of the castle dates from 1253.
The town's own name refers back to that landscape. 'Krumlov' probably derives from the medieval German 'Krumme Aue' or 'Krumben Ouwe', meaning something like 'curved meadow' or 'meadow in the bend', a clear reference to the shape of the loop the river draws around the old town. 'Český' ('Czech' or 'Bohemian') was added later to distinguish it from Moravský Krumlov.
In the shadow of the castle a settlement grew that soon obtained town rights. Its position on the trade route, control of the river crossing and the protection of the castle turned the small nucleus into a prosperous centre. The double structure — the castle on the height and the burgher town hugged by the river — was fixed in these first centuries and still defines the shape of Český Krumlov today.
In 1302, after the branch of the Vítkovci that held the estate died out, Český Krumlov passed to the Rožmberks (Rosenbergs), another branch of the same line and one of the richest and most powerful noble families in the kingdom of Bohemia. Under their rule, which lasted exactly three centuries, the town lived its greatest age and became one of the most important seigneurial residences in the country, almost a small court.
The Rožmberks enlarged and embellished the castle, turning it from a Gothic fortress into a palatial residence. The great driving force was Vilém (William) of Rožmberk, in the sixteenth century, who gave the complex its Renaissance character, hired Italian artists and made the Krumlov court a focus of culture. The famous sgraffito decoration of the Round Tower and of many buildings dates from that period. The town flourished on trade, crafts and the silver and other metal mining of the surrounding region.
The family's heraldic emblem — a red five-petalled rose on a white or silver field — became the symbol of the town and can still be seen everywhere: on façades, coats of arms and at the Five-Petalled Rose Festival. Petr Vok, the last of the Rožmberks, a cultivated but indebted man, was forced in 1602 to sell the Krumlov estate to the emperor Rudolf II of Habsburg, closing the golden age of the family that had made the town great.
After the brief imperial period under Rudolf II, the Český Krumlov estate was handed in 1622 to the Eggenberg family, in reward for their services to the Habsburgs during the Thirty Years' War. The Eggenbergs, ennobled as dukes of Krumau, maintained the prestige of the residence and undertook new works. To them we owe, for example, the first version of the castle theatre and the famous gilded state coach kept in the palace.
When the Eggenbergs died out without direct heirs, the estate passed in 1719 to the Schwarzenbergs, one of the most influential aristocratic families of the Austrian monarchy, who would keep Krumlov until the twentieth century. Under the Schwarzenbergs the castle received its great baroque and rococo stamp: the interiors were renewed, the gardens enlarged and, above all, the extraordinary Baroque Theatre of the castle was completed around 1766, one of the very few in the world that keeps its stage, its wooden machinery, its backdrops and its original costumes intact.
Through these centuries the town went on as a seigneurial, commercial and craft settlement, with a mostly German-speaking population (Krumau), though part of the kingdom of Bohemia. The successive noble families left in the town-and-castle ensemble that rich layering of styles — Gothic, Renaissance, baroque — that UNESCO would recognise centuries later as an exceptional record of the development of a small central European town.
The twentieth century brought Český Krumlov the great upheavals of central European history. After the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the end of the First World War, in 1918, the town — with its German-speaking majority — became part of the new Czechoslovakia, a state with a Czech majority. That tension between the German population of the Sudetenland and the new state would shape the following decades.
In 1938, under the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland — including Krumau — was annexed by Nazi Germany, and the town was under the Third Reich until the end of the Second World War. Those were dark years: persecution, militarisation and the drama of war.
After the German defeat in 1945, and under the post-war decrees, the German-speaking population — which for centuries had been the majority in the town — was expelled en masse to Germany and Austria. It was a painful exodus that emptied and completely transformed the social fabric of Český Krumlov, later repopulated with Czech inhabitants. The Schwarzenberg property, like that of so many noble families, was confiscated by the state. The town, which had been a prosperous German-Bohemian centre for centuries, was entering a new and difficult stage.
During the communist period (1948-1989), Český Krumlov lived through decades of neglect. With no resources for maintenance and outside the regime's grand plans, the historic centre slowly decayed: peeling façades, buildings in poor condition and a castle losing its shine. Paradoxically, that same neglect had an unexpectedly protective effect: with no money or interest in 'modernising' or demolishing, the town kept its medieval and Renaissance fabric almost intact, without the interventions that disfigured other European historic centres.
The Velvet Revolution of 1989 and the fall of communism changed the town's fate. The new Czech Republic undertook a careful restoration of the whole, recovering façades, sgraffito, roofs and the castle itself, and giving it back its splendour. International recognition was not long in coming: in 1992 UNESCO inscribed the historic centre of Český Krumlov on the World Heritage List, valuing it as an exceptionally well-preserved example of a small medieval central European town with its castle, which grew and developed organically over five centuries.
Since then, Český Krumlov has become one of the most visited destinations in the Czech Republic after Prague. Every year it receives crowds who come, above all, on a day trip. Its current challenge is to balance that tourist success with the preservation of its heritage and the life of its slightly more than 13,000 inhabitants, so that the town remains something more than a stage set: a living town that, as evening falls and the visitors leave, recovers all its quiet magic.