BOHEMIAN PARADISE

The area with the beautiful countryside not far from the Czech capital Prague became a favorite resort of Czech literary, artistic and intellectual elite already in the mid-19th century. Celebrities of Czech cultural life were looking for inspiration there and literally felt as if they were in the a paradise. Their own name Bohemian Paradise got so usual that today it is an official name of the whole tourist area offering a wide range of natural beauties, monuments and works of folk architecture.

Diverse sandstone rock towns with pine groves, forests, streams in deep valleys, brooks, ponds, meadows, picturesque villages, a number of castles and chateaus characterize this harmonious landscape of this imaginary paradise.

Prachovské skály

Sandstone rocks lining canyon river valleys or forming larger rock towns are inherently connected to the Bohemian Paradise. The nature reserve Prachovské rocks is a unique natural and cultural monument with a unique ecosystem formed by mutual binding of rock town, forest environment, wild animals and plants. A system of Jinolické ponds at the northeast border is also worth to visit.

Separate outcrops of igneous rocks are another dominant landscape feature of the Bohemian Paradise. In the past a lot of them became a strategically advantageous location for building castles. Today the castles Kost, Trosky, Veliš and Kumburk are informal symbols of whole tourist area.

The exceptional natural value of the Bohemian Paradise led in 1955 to the declaration of large-scale protection of the most valuable part of the tourist area in the form of Protected Area, which in 2005 also became a UNESCO Geopark.