Cesky Krumlov

A round tower painted pink and green, where the stonework pattern is paint rather than carving. At the top of 162 steps the loop of the river around the town shows all at once.

Few theatres anywhere keep their 1766 stage machinery and painted scenery intact. To protect the timber, both the number of visitors and the number of tours are held down.

Bears have been kept in the dry moat under the castle since the sixteenth century. Two live there now, and the keeping records are posted on the wall.

An inflatable takes about two hours down the water that wraps the town. Two built weirs sit on the way, and each one puts water into the boat.

Three tiers of arches connect the castle to its garden, and the top tier is a covered passage. Through the lower arches the town roofs appear as if framed.

Work by the painter who lodged here hangs beside photographs of the town as it was then. The building is a former brewery, so the ceilings are low and the rooms run like a maze.

In the castle garden the whole auditorium turns on a ring. During summer performances the seating swings toward a different stage as the scene changes.

Built in 1909, used as a store after the war and reopened in 2014. It works now as a gallery and tea room rather than a place of worship.

A mine train runs 1.8km into the old graphite workings outside town. Inside it holds nine degrees all year, and the door hands you a coat and a helmet.

A hillside garden south of the centre, positioned to hold the castle and the town in one frame. Entry costs nothing and the few benches keep their occupants for a while.

Gothic church crowning the old town hill above the river bend. Stone ribs weave a net across the nave vault, finished in the 15th century. Its slim belfry and the castle tower mark the town from every angle, handy when the lanes get confusing.

Photographer Josef Seidel's studio, kept as he and his son left it. The glass-roofed shooting room and old cameras survive, and the glass plate negatives made here run to tens of thousands. It sits across the river in Plesivec, away from old town crowds.

At 1,084m the highest summit of the Blansky Forest, crowned with an observatory and a stone tower built in 1825 as a lookout. No older stone tower of this kind stands in Bohemia. On clear, cold days the Alps show along the southern skyline.

A Cistercian abbey founded by Ottokar II in 1263, downstream from Krumlov on the Vltava. Its name, Golden Crown, comes from a relic of the Crown of Thorns the king gave it. Plenty of rafters stop here on their way down the river.

A white castle above the town of Hluboka, north of Ceske Budejovice, remodelled by the Schwarzenbergs in the 19th century after England's Windsor Castle. Tours cover wood-panelled rooms and an arms collection. Entry to the broad English park below is free.

A castle on a rock over the Vltava upstream from Krumlov, which gave the Rosenberg family its name. A legend of a White Lady ghost clings to it, and the riverside village below is small and quiet. Raft rental firms often use it as the upper launch point.

A ring of farmhouses around a broad green, their South Bohemian folk Baroque gables intact. UNESCO inscribed the village in 1998. Families still occupy the farms, so admire them from the road rather than stepping through the gates.

A boardwalk strung through the forest at treetop height above Lake Lipno. From the lookout tower that ends it, the lake and the Sumava hills spread out, and a long slide inside it makes a quick way down. The gentle gradient lets pushchairs make the climb.