Not Far From Prague, a Czech Village Worth Rhapsodizing About
The frozen-in-time town of Český Krumlov has scenery and history—and beer—that keeps travelers coming back
AFTER A DAY of walking the cobblestone streets of Český Krumlov, a medieval town in the Czech Republic just north of the Austrian border, my wife and I agreed that a beer was in order.
“Bring us something cold and local,” I asked the waiter at the cafe where we’d taken seats at a table outside. Czechs are proud of their beers: They guzzle them with gusto, consuming 30% more per person than Austrians or Germans, the two runners-up in the list of big beer drinking countries (Czechs drink twice as much as the relatively abstemious Americans). So I was eager to sample some of the local suds. When he returned, the waiter was carrying two tall glasses emblazoned with a red-lettered swoosh and the logo, Budweiser.
We came all this way for a Bud?
“Sorry, but we wanted a Czech beer,” I said before the waiter could get away.
“That is a Czech beer,” he replied. “Try it. You’ll like it.”
I liked it very much. It was full-bodied with a nice tang of hops; hefty but not heavy. “Where is it made?” I asked as he passed by our sidewalk table again. Just a half-hour away, it turned out. My curiosity was piqued. How was this Budweiser related to the one with the same name and a similar logo that’s served in bars all across America? I added the question to my already lengthy list of things we wanted to explore in this surprising place.
Český Krumlov is located 15 miles north of the Austrian border in the western Czech region of Bohemia. It was part of Sudetenland, a historically German region that was incorporated into Czechoslovakia at the end of World War I and annexed by Hitler after he swept up Austria in 1938. Ten years later, it fell into the shadow of the Iron Curtain and was left to rot from neglect by the Soviet-managed Czechoslovakian government.
The restored Renaissance plasterwork facade of restaurant Jakub, in the Krcinuv Dum Hotel PHOTO: ROGER TOLL FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The town’s fortunes have certainly reversed in the 25 years since the Velvet Revolution. Today, it is the Czech Republic’s second most visited destination, a fairy-tale pretty town of 14,000, cradled below forested hills and straddling the Vltava River, which carves swooping esses through the historic center. No fairy tale would be complete without a castle, and Český Krumlov’s, which served as the seat of the House of Rožmberk (Rosenberg in English) from the mid-1200s to the 1600s, doesn’t disappoint.
“In those feudal days, the family owned the land, they owned the people and they governed the Kingdom of Bohemia as deputy kings,” our guide told us as we toured the main castle building, just a small part of the 40 Rennaissance and Baroque structures that comprise the entire complex. “They wanted their home to be as impressive, and nearly as large, as the king’s castle in Prague.”
They certainly succeeded at impressing. The ruling family’s vast wealth enabled them to hire the finest Italian and Dutch craftsmen to build and decorate their home, whose theater, added in the 17th century, is one of only two remaining Baroque theaters in Europe (the other is in Sweden). Its ceiling and walls are covered with elegant murals by two Viennese painters, and the complex mechanical systems that were used to move scenery and create special effects like wind and rain are especially interesting.
I had never heard of the House of Rožmberk, and had barely heard of Bohemia. I felt I was in a new world, just a bit further east of the Europe I know well yet as unknown to me as medieval China.
The town was a bustling center of trade, philosophy and science in medieval days, which is easy to imagine while walking along the cobblestone lanes among Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque buildings—not a straight line in sight.
The next day, my wife and I ordered two more glasses of what was fast becoming our favorite beer in the cafe at the Egon Schiele Art Centrum. Set in a former brewery, the arts complex features works by Mr. Schiele, the bad-boy Viennese artist who scandalized the town when he and his mistress/model lived in the building for a year in 1911. He spent hours painting her as she posed nude in their garden, which apparently was less than private. The couple was forced to abandon their Eden in the wake of communal indignation.
We struck up a conversation with Ivo Janousek and Jan Palkovic, graduate students who grew up in Český Krumlov and who told us about the years behind the Iron Curtain.
Local lagers on tap PHOTO: ROGER TOLL
“No money was coming from the government, so the town remained as it had always been, in a sort of deep freeze,” Mr. Palkovic said, explaining the absence of the bland and ugly modern buildings so commonly seen in former Eastern Bloc countries. With the Velvet Revolution, he said, everything changed. “Suddenly there was a future. People responded in a spontaneous burst of restoration and conservation work. There was no state funding at first,” Mr. Palkovic said. “The people of the town did it because it had to be done. It’s our inheritance, so a lot of people got involved.”
‘Bad boy Egon Schiele spent hours painting his nude mistress in the garden here.’
“What Český Krumlov was in the 1500s is present in the town of today,” Mr. Janousek said. “After the peak of activity here in the late 1500s, the place went to sleep, you might say. Now it has reawakened, but this time it is opening up to a much wider world. Český Krumlov is alive because of tourism.”
Indeed, the town’s setting along the Vltava and beneath forested hillsides makes it a popular spot for both kayakers and hikers, who arrive in the spring and stay through the end of fall. Český Krumlov’s castle and other historic buildings have earned it numerous recognitions; it was designated as a Unesco World Heritage site in 2002.
The next day, hoping to solve the mystery of the “other” Budweiser, we drove 10 miles to České Budějovice, a small city of about 90,000. České Budějovice is the commercial and political capital of South Bohemia and has been a center for beer production since the 13th century. Its first large brewery, Bürgerliches Brauhaus Budweis, was founded in 1795 by the German-speaking population. A century later, in 1896, the city’s marginalized Czech-speaking populace launched its own brewery, Budweiser Budvar, which is where the beer our waiter introduced us to is made.
We took a tour of the Budweiser Budvar brewery, which included a look at the massive, copper fermenting vessels in the brewhouse and a sampling of the wares. Our guide cleared up at least part of our Budweiser confusion when she explained that the name Budweiser can indicate both a beer made in Budějovice (Budweis, in German) or a beer brewed in the same style as the pale lagers of Budějovice (as the American Budweiser is).
Anheuser-Busch’s Budweiser hit the market in 1876, 20 years before the first bottle of Budweiser Budvar was sold. Shortly after the Czech Budweiser appeared, ownership of the name became a legally fraught issue that continues today. Budweiser Budvar is sold in most of the world under that name. But in Canada, the U.S. and some of Latin America it is sold as Czechvar. Similarly, in much of Europe, Anheuser-Busch’s Budweiser is sold simply as “Bud.”
The deep caramel-colored quaff we were served on our first evening in Bohemia was just one of many happy discoveries we made during our two days in southern Bohemia. Another was that whenever we have a taste for that local brew back home, we can always crack open a Czechvar, which, no matter what you call it, will always taste to us like Český Krumlov.
THE LOWDOWN // EXPLORING SOUTHERN BOHEMIA’S BEER COUNTRY
Getting There: The easiest and most scenic way to reach Český Krumlov is by car. It is about a 3-hour drive from Prague or Vienna and about a 4-hour drive from Munich. The roads through South Bohemia are excellent.
Staying There: Hotel Ruze, a 16th-century palace with castle views, is the only 5-star hotel in town (from $150 per night, english.janhotels.cz). Sister hotels Krcinuv Dum and Latrán are also fine choices. Each has modern furnishings and a lot of Old-World charm. The suites are especially nice (from $90 per night, hotely-krumlov.cz/en). Castle View Apartments, just off the central square, has two roomy apartments for spreading out during extended stays (from $100 per night, castleview.cz/en).
Eating There: You can’t go wrong with fine restaurants Le Jardin, in the Hotel Bellevue(bellevuehotelkrumlov.cz), or Jakub (jakubrestaurant.cz/en), which serve traditional Czech fare and Continental fare. The popular U dwau Maryi (At Two Marys) is a fun place to have lunch at riverside tables in the shadow of the castle walls (2marie.cz). If visiting České Budějovice, don’t miss a meal at Masny Kramy, located in a 16th-century former meat market; the steaks are appropriately superb (masne-kramy.cz/en#home).
