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Chanovice
Today I am sharing some of my photos from Chanovice, the village I had assigned to August in my photo project for this year. I selected 35 photos again, as in the previous months. Chanovice has just about 720 inhabitants but the first written record that mentions the village dates back to the 14th century. There are several interesting objects in the village. A chateau, whose building has been used as an elementary school and a museum of folk craft; a former farmyard that has been rebuilt and nowadays includes an information centre and a gallery; a Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross; an observation tower; and an open-air museum with exhibition…
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Manětín
Manětín is the town that I had assigned to July in my photo project for this year so here I am to share some of the photos I took there and liked best. 35 photos again, as for the previous towns. Manětín is just a small town with about 1200 inhabitants but it’s well known for its Baroque chateau, buildings and statues. It’s sometimes even called a Baroque pearl of West Bohemia. The town acquired its Baroque look after the fire that occurred in 1712 and burnt most of the town buildings including the church and chateau. They had to be rebuilt and repaired and Baroque was the style of the time. Quite…
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Kašperské Hory
Kašperské Hory was the town assigned to June in my photo project for this year and here I am to present some of the photos I took there. 35 photos again, as in the previous months. By the way, I was quite surprised to see that many of the photos I took were in the portrait rather than landscape format, not quite typical for me. The town Kašperské Hory has about 1500 inhabitants. It is situated in a beautiful area of Šumava mountains and many tourists visit it throughout the whole year. In the 14th century it was an important town for its gold mines. To guard the boarder and protect the goldfields…
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Konstantinovy Lázně
Konstantinovy Lázně is a village that was assigned to May in my photo project for this year so here I am to present some of the photos I took there. Konstantinovy Lázně is just a village with about 900 inhabitants but most importantly, it is a spa where health problems associated with the cardiovascular system are treated. It is the smallest spa in the Czech Republic. The history of the village reaches back to the 16th century but the spa’s history is relatively short. It started at the beginning of the 19th century when the first spa building was built by a spring rich in hydrogen sulphide. In 2016, Konstantinovy Lázně was…
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Chudenice
Chudenice is the town assigned to April in my photo project for this year so here I am, at the end of the month, to present some of the photos I took there. 35 photos again, as in the previous months, somehow the number feels good. Chudenice is a small town with about 705 inhabitants and long history reaching back to 1200. The town and its history are closely connected with one of the oldest Czech noble families – the Czernin family. The most interesting places you can see in the town are the old Czernin castle, church of John the Baptist, observation tower Bolfánek, bath house and manor with…
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Žichovice
Žichovice is the town that I had assigned to March in my photo project for this year so here I am at the end of the month to share some of the photos I took. I opted for the same number of photos as in my previous posts related to this project which is 35. Why Žichovice? It’s a small town (about 680 inhabitants) with a long history (dating back to 1045) and a few interesting buildings whose photos captured my attention when I was browsing the Internet and looking for potential places for the project. But photography may be deceptive and may show you things which are no longer true or look…
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Horšovský Týn
Horšovský Týn is the town assigned to February in my photo project for this year and because today is the last day of the month, I am here to share some of the photos I took. I opted for the same number of photos as in my post on Žinkovy which is 35. Horšovský Týn is a very old town that went through many changes. The first written reference to it comes from 1184, it was pronounced a town in the fourteenth century. In 1953, the town was declared an urban conservation area. Nowadays about 5,000 inhabitants live there. There is a castle in the town (built in the 13th century and rebuilt in…
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Winter trip to Karlovy Vary
In the Czech Republic, we have a tradition of so called “spring holidays” for schoolchildren. The holidays last one week but they are planned within several weeks so that all districts don’t have them at the same time, this year the span is from February 5 to March 18. My younger son Zbyněk has had the holidays this week and because we don’t go skiing, we were thinking about a trip to make. Finally we decided to visit the spa Karlovy Vary where Zbyněk was on a school trip last June and it seemed interesting to visit the spa in winter under quite different conditions. Also, I had never been…
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Žinkovy
January is almost at its end so I’m here to share some of the photos I took in Žinkovy, the first town on the list of my photo project for this year. Why Žinkovy, you might ask? The answer would be simple. Although it’s just a small town that is neither extraordinary nor special, we visited it several times in different seasons and always found something interesting so it seemed a good place to start the project with. Let me clarify that I don’t see this collection of photos as something representing the town but rather as a collection of captures that caught my attention. If you were there, you…
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Stachelberg fort
I have never been much interested in military history and don’t know much about it but I was quite impressed by the Stachelberg fort my family and I visited in northern Bohemia. The Stachelberg fort was built as part of border defences against Nazi Germany growing in power, it was supposed to become the largest Czechoslovak artillery fort. The fort consists of 12 objects connected by means of extensive underground, the total length of tunnels and rooms situated 25 to 60 metres underground is approximately 3.5 kilometres. Construction of the fort started in October 1937 and should have been finished in 2 years but it was stopped prematurely in October…
