Kutna Hora

I can't remember when the idea of meeting up with Matthew and Kristyna in Prague was first mooted, or whose idea it was. Arrangements must have been firmed-up up by late April because we booked our ferry crossing on the 24th, two days before we flew to the Far East. We agreed that we would all meet in Karlstejn, Matthew and Kristyna staying in a chalet in Krystyna's Mum's garden and we would book into a campsite nearby. Prague was only a 40 minute train ride away so it all made sense.

However, we agreed that it might be nice to explore somewhere else in the Czech countryside. Matthew came up with two suggestions. A couple of years ago he attended a film festival in Karlovy Vary, a spa town north west of Prague, he remembered it as an attractive town with nice cafés. The route home would take through Saxony and Thuringia, new territory for us, but in all honesty not places we had any particular desire to visit.

His other suggestion was a little more left field. He wondered about visiting Kutna Hora, an ancient town about 100kms east of Prague. Matthew likes historically based computer strategy games. Kutna Hora featured in a recent favourite, 'Kingdom Come, Deliverance II, where as fifteenth century peasant, you are tasked with making your way in life, challenged by the machinations of late medieval Bohemian politics and the ever present hazards of plague and famine or being denounced as a heretic. 

We went for this option, partly because it was the quirkiest, but also it meant we would leave the Czech Republic by a southerly route that skirted the Austrian border and took us back home through Bavaria. Lake Lipno in southern Bohemia has a clutch of campsites around it, some bike tracks around the shoreline and many of opportunities for me to fall off my paddleboard. We had a plan!

We stayed at Camping St Barbara on the outskirts of the town; it's about a 10 minute walk into the centre. The Search for Sites app had pre-warned us of the somewhat convoluted entry system. On arrival you are faced with a solid steel security gate with a big yellow sign on it giving a mobile number.

Thankfully the person who answered it spoke English, and gave us the entry code, explaining they would call around at 8.30am the following morning to collect the fee - they accepted euros or Czech krona. At €40 per night it's one of the more expensive places we have stayed in Europe.

It's an attractive small site, a little idiosyncratic, but the pitches are a decent size and hedged to give privacy.  

Trees are dotted about here and there to give shade and in the middle there's a communal firepit encircled by stone benches. The place feels like a big garden, which I suspect it was originally. 

You needed a token for a shower, which seemed a bit steep given the price of the place. Obtaining the token involves a trip down memory lane. Attached to the wall next to the shower block is a small, vending machine, familiar, I suspect, only to people aged over sixty. I am struggling to describe it exactly - I wish I'd taken a photograph - the best phrase I can come up with is 'vintage gob-stopper auto-vendor'. About 40cm high, with red metal top and a glass box below, back in the day the machine would have been packed full of garish coloured gob-stoppers,. When you placed an old penny in the slot on the top of the grey metal knob on the front, and twisted it anti-clockwise, in went the penny and out popped a giant globular gob-stopper from a shute below covered with a handsomely engraved silver coloured flap. Suddenly I had become the seven year old me! Repurposed in rural Czechia the contraption worked identically, though the coin was now a 20kr piece and what popped out was a zinc shower token contained within a clear plastic sphere. 

Gill showered first and was happy to give a debrief afterwards. Yes the token worked once you figured out how to open the plastic sphere with wet fingers. The slot on the shower was above her eye level, so for anyone shorter than 1.7m proved a challenge as the grooved token can only be inserted one way. The water was warmish eventually and lasted just about long enough for a hair wash. When the flow pulsed the water is about to stop...and the thing that looks like a birdbox on the wall next to the shower entrance is a receptacle for your spent plastic token holders.... Really, taking a shower should not be this intricate!

Though Camping Saint Barbara is somewhat idiosyncratic it is worthwhile putting up with its peculiarties because Kutna Hora itself is a truly delightful place to visit.

 

There had been a Celtic settlement here in the first century BCE, but it was in the late thirteenth century that the town grew in importance when its silver mines developed. Fifty years later Kutna Hora had developed into the second most significant place in Bohemia after Prague when the royal mint was established in the town.

It's signicance as a financial centre waned during the seventeenth century as the mines became unviable. However, the town continued to flourish as a seat of ecclesiastical learning with the growth of a significant Jesuit college. 

By the nineteenth century Kutna Hora had become something of a provincial backwater and because of this there was little development. Consequently the town retained a magnificent collection of buildings ranging from the medieval period to the early modern Not just signature buildings but entire streets and squares that are historically significant, including rare examples of seventeenth century houses decorated with murals featuring scenes everyday life. 

It was about a fifteen minute walk from the campsite to the historic centre. We headed for a spot on Google maps marked 'gothic fountain' which we figured must be in the ancient bit. 

It was, but the streets around it were a bit of a maze and it was difficult to find the centre of the old town. I had spotted a tall church tower and decided that it may be in the central square. It wasn't, but in the process of not finding it we did stumble upon the market place.

The square is lined with substantial houses from the Renaissance and early modern eras. The best example of a painted facade is located here, the mansion of a former mayor Google informed us dating from the middle of the seventeenth century.

Wandering further we happened upon the church with the tall tower which we had spotted in the distance. The church of St James is situated next to the 'Italian Court' - site of the ancient mint. 

The area attracts two kinds of tourist. People with a keen interest in the heyday of the kingdom of Bohemia and gamers. The church of St James features in 'Kingdom Come, Deliverance II' depicted with a wooden crane on its roof as almost complete in the early 1400s, the era featured in the game.

Matthew Whatsapped us to say that they had settled into their hotel and wondered about finding somewhere to eat in the early evening. Gill checked her phone and found 'Restaurace V Ruthardce' nearby, the place had good reviews and a menu that included lighter dishes as well the more robust, meaty offerings usually found on a traditional Czech menu. I can't recall what we all chose, but everyone found something to their liking. 

The only photo I took was of my beer illustrating how Czech drinkers appreciate a big foaming head. Something back home which would be interpreted as being seriously short-changed!

Kutna Hora is a hilly town, but not a classic medieval hill-town with a castle at the top with a walled city beneath it. Here the old town meanders along the contours of a steep valley. The view from the area around the restaurant illustrated this with a prospect of one of Kutna Hora other famous monuments, the startlingly Gothic St Barbara's Church.

The vaulted roof of St. Barbera's church is very eye catching. In Western Europe the style would probably be described as 'flamboyant', but the same timelines don't really apply here, so I was somewhat flummoxed.

Another striking aspect of Kutna Hora is pastel coloured stuccoed houses.

When I mentioned this to Kristyna she speculated that this may be relatively modern because when she came here as a child many of the buildings were dull concrete coloured. It's a trend we've noticed elsewhere, when we first visited the villages in l'Aude in the early 1990s they were dour looking, twenty years later they'd assumed a Provencal look with dusty pink and ochre toned facade.

Our plan for the following day was to visit the part of the town that we'd admired from afar today - the area in the vicinity of St Barbera's church. 

It is a startling looking building, it looks too perfectly Gothic to be true, almost a pastiche of the style. Matthew and I bought tickets to see the interior.

A section of the gallery had a series of information boards outlining the development of the building. Due to political instability work on the building was intermittent, it took over two centuries to complete the work. During the seventeenth century the unusual vaulted roof was replaced by a more stable conventional ridged design, only to be replaced in the nineteenth century by something approximating to the original. The church was substantially remodelled at this time, so in a sense what we see today is to some extent a pastiche.

There were some interesting frescoes in one of the side chapels. One depicted the town's silver miners acknowledging their contribution to the Kutna Hora's prestige and wealth. Another painting included an African and an 'oriental' figure. Judging by the style they looked to be seventeenth century additions.

By this time Kutna Hora had become an important centre for training Jesuit priests whose missionary work reached out across the globe. One interpretation of the scene is that is an assertion of the church triumphant, reaching out across the continents.

One of the delightful discoveries of the trip has been Czech wine, similar in style to German, but maybe less flowery. The valley next to St Barbara's church is covered in steeply terraced vineyards. A booth sold wine by the glass which you could drink amongst the vines.

 The tables and chairs were somewhat precariously positioned, but it was fun, and the wine was excellent.

It had been threatening rain all day and in the early afternoon it started to drizzle. We found a traditional tavern that was still serving food - robust Czech fare - dumplings with everything.  The decor definitely had a medieval vibe, lots of suits of armour and weaponry.

It also had a ball pool, Jesse's first encounter with one. He loved it.

Matthew, Kristyna and Jesse headed back to their hotel, we returned to Camping Gob-stopper. We've had a great time together, on almost all of our motorhome travels it's just been the two of us. However, over the previous two decades we travelled as a family; it's fun experiencing places with children. They always have a unique take on places. A quote from the American poet, Louise Gluck, popped into my feed a couple of days ago, "We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory".