Europe 2019 - Day 31 (Part 1)

6 June 2019, Thursday 

Today we meet up with my friend’s friend who is from Latvia but is working in the Czech Republic, Zanna. She has very kindly offered to bring us around, and we asked to go to Kutna Hora as there are some interesting sights there. 

Zanna picked us up from our hostel at about 9 a.m. and we headed to Kutna Hora, which was about 2 hours’ drive. And what a drive! I’m lucky as I was sitting in the backseat, and even from there I could tell that the driving was controversial. My friend who is a stickler for rules and safety was holding on to her seat belt for her dear life. But anyway, we reached our destination in one piece and intact. 

Kutna Hora means Silver Mountains, and gets its name from the silver found there during the Middle Ages. Duh. Initially it was established as a mining camp in the 13th century, but soon became a royal town at par with Prague. It is a quaint, quiet and medieval looking town with narrow cobbled streets in between the bigger roads. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

On the way to the Church of St Barbara which I wanted to see, we saw another magnificent church, the St James Church. It was built between 1333 to 1336, making it the oldest church in town. We also saw an interesting old building which used to be a burgher residence in the late 15th century.

Then the Church of St Barbara. It is a beautiful and magnificent late Gothic church built in 1388. Unfortunately its construction was interrupted several times and it was only completed some 500 years later, in 1905. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Nearby was the Corpus Christi Chapel, built in the 14th century, originally designed as an ossuary, and is among the few structures still preserved from the late Gothic era. 

Then we stopped at a local restaurant for lunch. Lunch for me which was seared duck breast with mashed potatoes and sauce. According to Zanna it’s one of the Czech Republic’s traditional dishes. I also had a beer brewed in Kutna Hora, called Kutna Hora lager. 

Then we had to walk back to the car but we got horribly lost, and must have circled the small town at least 3 times (including the first time up to St Barbara’s Church). But on the way we managed to see some other interesting buildings, such as the 

Church of St. John of Nepomuk (built between 1734-1752 to celebrate the canonisation of John of Nepomuk and serves to glorify the patrons of Czech Lands), Dačický House which is a late Gothic house and the birthplace of a famous Bohemian named Mikuláš Dačický born in 1555, the late Gothic Stone Fountain created as part of Kutna Hora’s early water distribution system around 1495 and the Baroque styled Plague Column built in 1714-1716 in commemoration of a contemporary plague in 1713 which killed thousands of people there.