Trebitsch and Teltsch - UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Czech Republic

Today we explored two places in Czech Republic that made it onto UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites: Trebitsch and Teltsch in South Moravia.

We started our tour of Trebitsch at Charles Square, lined with Renaissance buildings.

We made a short detour to the Church of St. Martin with its 75-meter high city tower.

Then we continued to the area that made it onto the UNESCO World Heritage List: the Jewish Quarter.

In this quarter, there are 123 preserved houses and two synagogues.

We visited the 'rear synagogue', which fortunately could be visited without a guided tour, only with an information sheet in German.

It dates back to 1669, but was desecrated in the 1920s due to the shrinking number of Jewish community members and then served as a storage room.

We then continued uphill to the Jewish cemetery, which was established in the 17th century.

The oldest gravestone among the approximately 3000 here is from 1631. Most of the gravestones we saw and could decipher were from the first half of the 20th century.

We then went up and down the hill to the second structure that brought Trebitsch onto the UNESCO World Heritage List: St. Prokopius Basilica.

Since you can only visit the church with a Czech guided tour, we decided not to take a tour and only took a brief look inside through the barred door.

But the exterior of the church was also very impressive.

There used to be a monastery next to the church, but it was later converted into a castle.

After exploring Trebitsch, we continued to Teltsch. On the approximately half-hour drive, it started to rain heavily (according to the weather app, 20 mm of rain). It was supposed to continue raining and thundering for the next two hours. However, we were lucky that the weather forecast in Czech Republic is quite unreliable with our app: it only rained during the drive, and we stayed dry in the two places we visited.

The parking lot was already full and the city was crowded with people: we happened to choose the day of a folk festival for our visit.

We walked past many stalls to the old town with its huge market square.

The square is lined with elaborately decorated gabled houses.

We enjoyed the lively atmosphere and the colorful houses while having a piece of cake.

To get a view from above, we climbed up the tower of St. James's Church right on the market square.

The ascent was sometimes quite narrow and the wooden planks didn't always look very reassuring, but from the top we had a good view of the surroundings, the market square, and the castle right next to it.

To conclude our tour of the market square, we visited the castle and its courtyards.

At the entrance, you can take a look at the somewhat elaborately designed All Saints' Chapel, which houses the marble tomb of the city's renewer Zacharias von Neuhaus and his wife.

On our way back to the parking lot, we saw the start of the dragon boat race, which took place parallel to the folk festival and created a loud atmosphere on the bridge to the old town.