Žďár nad Sázavou

Although Žďár nad Sázavou, a town in the middle of the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands 150 km east of Prague, boasts a historic centre with a town hall, a plague column and a Baroque fortress with a museum, its northern edge with a castle and pilgrimage church on hill Zelená Hora (Green Mountain) attracts even more attention from visitors. This masterpiece of the architect Jan Blažej Santini was rightly inscribed among the UNESCO List of Monuments in 1994.

This famous architect and spiritual father of the Baroque Gothic, Jan Blažej Santini (1677–1723), was born into a Prague family of stonemasons and bricklayers from Italy. He was brought to Žďár nad Sázavou in the 18th century by the well-educated abbot Václav Vejmluva, who commissioned him to rebuild the burned-down monastery. Santini's work is also preserved in the monastery farmyard of Lyra, the sacristy of the Church of the Holy Trinity and the Lower Cemetery. The most important, however, is the pilgrimage church on Zelená Hora.

The strategic place for the establishment of Žďár nad Sázavou was the river Sázava, which remained part of its name. The settlement has been located there since 1100, later, the Studnice Cistercian Monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary was built. Pond farming and ore mining developed here. At the beginning of the 17th century, Žďár was already a guild centre, mainly thanks to weavers. The core of the town lies on a hill on the left bank of the river Sázava. It has an irregular quadrangular square with a former Renaissance town hall and a plague column. Behind it, on the north western edge of the centre, is the modernly rebuilt building of the former fortress and the Gothic church of St. Prokop.

Families with children will especially like the model railway in the Žďár Cultural House. A barrier-free route with several viewpoints, benches and rest areas will take you around the Konventský pond and the Natural Monument Louky u Černého Lesa.