Give it two days. One for the castle: Tour Route I for the Renaissance interiors, the painted tower for the roofscape, and the Baroque theatre, which sells a limited number of tickets. One for the town below, where the Egon Schiele Art Centrum and the Seidel photo studio are the museums worth your time. In summer, paddle the Vltava through the centre before the coaches arrive.
Český Krumlov is a town of 12,658 people wrapped in a double meander of the Vltava, and the whole historic centre has been UNESCO-listed since 1992. The castle above it is the second largest in the country. Everything worth seeing sits inside a twenty minute walk.
The original Renaissance and Baroque interiors, ending in the Masquerade Hall, whose 1748 wall paintings put a whole masked ball on four walls. Guided only, in Czech or on a separate English tour. Interiors do not run on Mondays, so plan the castle for any other day.
The tower is the picture everyone comes for, and climbing it is the only way to see the town from inside its own loop: red roofs, the river, the Šumava foothills behind. The museum below covers the Rosenberg, Eggenberg and Schwarzenberg centuries. Neither needs a guide, so both open when the interiors do not.
One of the best preserved Baroque theatres anywhere, with the original stage machinery, scene flats, props, costumes and librettos still in the building. Tour groups are capped to protect it and the season is short, so this is the one ticket to secure before you arrive.
Eleven hectares of terraced Baroque garden on the ridge above the castle, free to walk, with a Rococo cascade fountain at the midpoint. It is the quietest ground in Krumlov on a busy afternoon, and the climb up from the Cloak Bridge takes ten minutes.
The auditorium turns to face each scene in the open garden: 644 seats on a 650 tonne turntable, played through the summer by the South Bohemian Theatre. Performances start after dark and carry English and German subtitles. Tickets open in January and the season sells out.
Schiele's mother came from Krumlov, he painted here in 1911, and the town ran him out of it. The gallery that took his name in 1992 keeps a permanent room of his work and gives the rest of the old brewery building to twentieth-century shows. The best art in South Bohemia.
The Seidel family photographed the Šumava for eighty years and their studio survived intact: glass plates, the retouching desk, the painted backdrops, the darkroom. You can sit for a portrait on the original equipment. The most particular thing in town.
The river runs a loop straight through the centre, and the short town trip takes anywhere from half an hour to two hours, past the castle wall and over the weir. Half-day runs carry on downstream to Zlatá Koruna. Boat, paddles, life jacket and the transport back are in the price.
Founded in 1309 and rebuilt into the Gothic three-nave hall you walk into now, its spire is the counterweight to the castle tower in every photograph of the town. A national cultural monument, and the Rosenberg burial church.
The Rosenbergs began the Minorite house and its Corpus Christi church in 1350, with a convent of Poor Clares on the same block, and the Baroque rebuild of 1649 to 1681 is what stands. Restored as a museum complex, it is the one large site here that is never crowded.
The sloped main square, arcaded town hall on one side, plague column in the middle.
The green tektites thrown across South Bohemia by a meteorite impact 15 million years ago.
Nineteenth-century puppets and whole stage sets in the deconsecrated church of St. Jobst.
Plain Czech cooking in a pub interior that has not been redecorated in a century.
Terraces stepping down to the water, and a broader menu than most of the centre.
The full Vltava run: 35 km, eight to ten hours, past Rožmberk castle on its spur.
The town turns Renaissance for three days of tournaments, craft fairs and a costumed procession.
Around forty concerts in the riding hall, the gardens and the churches, running since 1992.
The South Bohemian Theatre plays the turning auditorium in the castle gardens after dark.
Baroque music and staging, performed in the rooms the repertoire was written for.
The autumn fair, folded together with the International Folklore Festival and an evening of open museums.
Stalls on Svornosti Square, and the shortest queues of the year at the castle.
Interior tours restart after the winter, with the town at its emptiest.
The gallery hangs one large twentieth-century exhibition a year beside the Schiele rooms.
The nearest large airport, about 170 km north. Nothing runs direct, so it is a transfer into Prague and a bus south, roughly five hours in all.
RegioJet and FlixBus run direct from Na Knížecí and Florenc, roughly hourly, in about three hours. The fastest and cheapest way in.
České dráhy runs south from Prague with a change at České Budějovice. The station sits above the town, a twenty minute walk down into the centre.
South Bohemian dill and potato soup, soured with cream, a poached egg dropped in.
Beef in a root-vegetable cream sauce, with bread dumplings and cranberry.
Roast pork, dumplings and cabbage. The Czech Sunday plate.
The pond fish South Bohemia is built on, breaded and fried, at its best in December.
Šumava river trout, whole off the grill, the summer alternative to pork.
Garlicky potato pancake, sold from hatches along Latrán all afternoon.
Fruit dumplings under quark, butter and sugar, eaten as a main course.
Brewed on Latrán since the 1620s, light and dark, poured across the town.
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