The Archbishop's palace at Kromeriz is a place where a bishop's idea of heaven became a garden. The prince-bishops of Olomouc, who ruled much of Moravia, made Kromeriz their summer residence, and in the seventeenth century they rebuilt the castle and laid out two gardens in the Baroque style. UNESCO listed the palace and the gardens in 1998. The Flower Garden is a formal garden with clipped hedges, fountains, and a long colonnade that is one of the finest in central Europe, while the larger Castle Garden beside the palace is a landscape park of lawns, trees and ponds.
The castle holds a picture gallery with one of the great paintings north of the Alps, The Flaying of Marsyas by Titian, a dark and disturbing work from his last years. The bishop who collected it bought it in the seventeenth century. The castle also has a large library and a music archive, and the rococo Assembly Hall hosted the Austrian parliament during the revolutions of 1848.
In the same ride is Olomouc, the old Moravian capital, whose Holy Trinity Column, a baroque monument over thirty metres high, was listed by UNESCO in 2000. The Haná region, where the two towns lie, is a fertile plain, and the roads run through fields of wheat, sugar beet and rapeseed, with villages of low houses and baroque churches. The riding is relaxed, with gentle bends and moderate traffic. The hills of the Beskydy and the Hostynske vrchy are within reach to the east for more interesting roads.
Kromeriz has about twenty-nine thousand people, so fuel, cafes and shops are plentiful, and the nearby town of Hulin is an alternative. Try a plate of Moravian food, with dumplings and roast pork, or a glass of local wine. Spring is lovely, when the gardens are in flower, and early autumn brings clear light. The gardens are a gentle place to walk after a long ride, so give yourself an hour or two.