České Budějovice | Levné ubytování České Budějovice | Penzion a relax centrum U Rudolfa

České Budějovice

For your stay in our cheap accommodation pension U Rudolfa Ceske Budejovice we recommend visiting the historic city center. České Budějovice is the largest city in South Bohemia. It lies in a basin in the České Budějovice basin at the confluence of the Vltava and Malše rivers at an altitude of 381 - 430 m. The town has about 100,000 inhabitants. It is the administrative, cultural, educational and transport center of the whole region. In addition to many secondary schools and conservatories, the city houses the University of South Bohemia, the Museum of South Bohemia, the South Bohemian Theater, a branch of the State Scientific Library, and some institutes of the Academy of Sciences.

Accommodation České Budějovice - Pension U Rudolfa also offers cycling trips to a wide area. From the U Rudolfa guest house, a 13-kilometer trail leads along the Vltava River from České Budějovice to Hluboká nad Vltavou.

The city has the largest square in our country (133 × 133 m), which, together with other parts of the historic core, was declared a city monument reserve in 1980.

České Budějovice was founded around 1265 by King Přemysl Otakar II. The city then became for many centuries a mainstay of royal power in the area. The historic core is still evidence of advanced urbanism at the time of its creation, when the entire city was measured at once, protected on two sides by the Vltava and Malší, with a regular network of wide streets around the square, and a place for a Dominican monastery with a church. the city.

In the 14th century, Budějovice, as the town was called, became an important center of crafts and trade in southern Bohemia and overtook other towns in the region. Kings Wenceslas II. and Charles IV. they endowed the city with a number of privileges and thus helped its further rapid development. During the Hussite wars, Budějovice stood on the king's side, mainly thanks to the patrician, who was largely of German origin. The city remained loyal to the king even during the resistance of the estates against Emperor Ferdinand I. In the years 1546 - 1547, when it did not join other important Czech cities. For this attitude, Budějovice was rewarded with a number of new privileges, including the right to a salt warehouse, which enabled the further prosperity of the city. Silver mines were established near Rudolfov (a small town on the north-eastern edge of the town), and in the years 1569 - 1611 there was a mint. The extended name of the town - České Budějovice - also comes from this period.

The rise was interrupted by the Thirty Years' War and a fire in 1641, which destroyed half of the houses. Reconstruction of the city and its economy was slow, prosperity and building development resumed on a larger scale only in the 18th century. The Piarist Order settled here, which founded a grammar school and a Piarist dormitory. In 1751, České Budějovice became the administrative center of the newly established Budějovice Region for the first time. During the Josephine reforms, a diocese was established here.

Until the beginning of the 19th century, České Budějovice was a small town enclosed in walls with less than 10,000 inhabitants. An important milestone was the establishment of a horse-drawn railway from České Budějovice to Linz in North Austria, the first train track on the Old Continent and the second in Europe after England (the preserved remains are a national cultural monument - an administrative building in Dominikánská Street and the first station in Mánesova Street). The first train departed from here in 1832. At that time, the first industrial enterprises began to emerge, Vojtěch Lanna founded a river shipyard. During the 19th century, the development of the town continued, the fortifications were demolished and České Budějovice grew to its current form into a town of hundreds of thousands.

Most of the historical and cultural sights of České Budějovice are concentrated on the square of Přemysl Otakar II. and in its immediate vicinity, ie in the so-called historical core of the city.

A characteristic feature of the square, which is entirely lined with typical arcades of burgher houses from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, is the Samson's Fountain. In the southwest corner stands the baroque town hall with allegorical statues on the ledge. The oldest part of České Budějovice includes the former Dominican monastery with the Church of the Sacrifice of the Virgin Mary, founded at the same time as the town in close proximity to the square. The church was part of the fortification system, demolished in the 19th century, of which only the remains have survived to this day with a tower called the Iron Maiden and the round bastion Otakarka on the Malše embankment and the so-called Rabenstein Tower. Of the city gates, only the Salt Gate leading to the river remained.

The most famous building and at the same time the dominant feature of the town is the free-standing 72 m high Black Tower, built in the 16th century near the square. In its vicinity is the Cathedral of St. Nicholas, founded at the same time as the city.

In the Old Town, in the place of the original settlement of Budivojice (today the settlement of the Paris Commune), there is a cemetery church of St. John the Baptist and St. Procopius, which was listed as a parish in the 13th century. It was rebuilt in its current form in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Today, there are many cultural institutions in the historical part of the city: there is a South Bohemian Museum, on the Malše embankment stands the old Empire building of the South Bohemian Theater from 1819, at the confluence of rivers is an observatory and planetarium.

In the new part of the city on the left bank of the Vltava, a large exhibition center was built, where, in addition to many other exhibitions, the annual international fair Živitelka takes place.

Many important personalities come from České Budějovice. These include, above all, graphic artist and painter Vlastimil Rada, graphic artist Karel Štěch, traveler and writer L. M. Pařízek and actor Eduard Kohout.