Telc

Three hundred metres long, with the houses on each side differing in colour and gable. No two repeat, and walking end to end turns into counting them.

A renaissance house at the west end of the square, with different timber ceilings in every room. Two tour routes are sold, and the shorter runs forty five minutes.

A circuit along the banks between the two ponds takes half an hour. On a still morning the roofline of the square turns up inverted in the water.

A romanesque tower of the thirteenth century, older than anything else here. A tight stair leads up to where the whole square fits into one view.

The garden behind the house asks no ticket and opens toward the pond. Several benches sit under the trees, and few people use them.

A white church beside the square, plain and bright inside. Chamber concerts are held here in summer with a little over a hundred seats.

A baroque column stands mid square, ringed with saints. Its wide base steps fill with people sitting out on summer evenings.

One wing of the chateau gathers household tools and a mechanical puppet theatre. The puppets move when wound, and the mechanism is started twice or three times daily.

Beyond the town, cycle routes run out across a gently rolling highland. Settlements are far apart, so it is wise to fill a bottle before setting off.

Once the coaches leave, hardly anyone remains on the square. The lamps sit low, and the house colours read differently than they do by day.

A Jewish quarter whose lanes and houses survive almost intact, inscribed by UNESCO in 2003 with the Basilica of St Procopius. You walk between two synagogues and a hillside Jewish cemetery. Romanesque columns line the cool crypt under the basilica.

A small Renaissance town near the Austrian border whose two squares are lined with houses covered in black and white sgraffito. Passages tangle underground beneath the houses, which you can visit with a guide. It sees far fewer visitors than Telc.

A Gothic castle in the forest north of Telc, turned into a Renaissance hunting lodge. A tall seven-sided tower looks out over the highland woods. The same family that held Telc chateau used it, so the decoration of the two echoes each other.

Santini's pilgrimage church of St John of Nepomuk, built in the 1720s on a star-shaped plan. Following the legend of five stars in the saint's halo, the building works in multiples of five throughout. UNESCO listed it in 1994.