On a low wooded rise called Zelená hora, Green Mountain, just outside Žďár nad Sázavou, stands one of the strangest and most beautiful churches in Central Europe. The architect was Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel, a Prague builder of Italian descent who loved to mix Gothic forms with Baroque drama, and here he built a pilgrimage church to St John of Nepomuk in the 1720s, shortly before the saint was even canonised. Everything in it plays on the number five: a star-shaped ground plan, five gates, five altars, five-pointed geometry repeated in the cloister around it. The reason is the legend that five stars appeared over the Vltava when John's body was thrown into the river in Prague, and the saint's tongue, said to have been found uncorrupted, is the other motif you will spot once you know to look for it. UNESCO listed it in 1994.
The church belonged to the Cistercian monastery in the valley below, and Santini also worked on the monastery itself, which is now a château with museum spaces and a lovely lake beside it. Allow time for both if you like architecture; the mix of pale walls, dark forest and water is quietly lovely.
The riding here is pure Vysočina, the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands: rolling uplands at five to eight hundred metres, spruce forests, fishponds and small villages with onion-domed churches. Roads are mostly quiet two-lane routes with long, flowing bends and short climbs; some secondary roads are patched and bumpy, so keep an eye out after winter. Nové Město na Moravě, ten kilometres north, is known for cross-country skiing and biathlon, which tells you what the weather is like from November to March. In summer the light over the ponds in the evening is the reward.
Žďár is a town of around twenty thousand, so fuel, supermarkets and restaurants are easy, and the parking near the church is usually calm outside summer weekends. Try a plate of svíčková or a simple soup and a Czech lager if you are stopping for the night; if not, a coffee near the château lake and a walk up the hill to the church will do nicely before you ride on into the highlands.