Pleasure Garden and Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape
Plan this ride
Recorded distance
370 km
Riding-time estimate
4 h 56
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
370 km from Kroměříž to Kroměříž, about 4 h 56 of riding. On the way it passes Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc, Tugendhat Villa in Brno, Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape and back through Tugendhat Villa in Brno. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Pleasure Garden
Kroměříž is a small, handsome town on the Morava in the Haná country, the flat and fertile middle of Moravia, and its Pleasure Garden, the Květná zahrada, is a surprise to anyone who arrives expecting a quiet agricultural place. It was laid out in the seventeenth century for a prince-bishop of Olomouc, Karl Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn, who wanted a formal Baroque garden with clipped hedges, parterres and a long colonnade, and the pattern has been preserved with unusual faithfulness. The garden is on the World Heritage list together with the castle.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Pleasure Garden is where the day begins. Next is Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc.
2. Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc
Olomouc is the city Prague forgot to overshadow. For centuries before the Habsburgs shifted their attention elsewhere it was the capital of Moravia, and the proof is on the Upper Square, where the Holy Trinity Column rises out of the cobbles like a stone wedding cake. It was built in the first half of the eighteenth century, roughly between 1716 and 1754, and it is among the largest Baroque sculpture groups in central Europe. The city raised it partly as thanks for surviving a plague, and UNESCO listed it in 2000. Walk round it and the saints keep appearing, each one a little more theatrical than the last.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc comes up 65 km in. Next is Tugendhat Villa in Brno.
3. Tugendhat Villa in Brno
When the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed a house for the young couple Grete and Fritz Tugendhat in Brno at the end of the 1920s, he created one of the masterpieces of modern architecture. Completed in 1930, the villa sits on a slope above the city, with a vast open-plan living room enclosed by glass walls that could be lowered into the floor, a wall of onyx, and chrome-plated steel columns. It was inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2001, and it remains one of the most influential houses of the twentieth century.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
130 km in you reach Tugendhat Villa in Brno. Next is Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape.
4. Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape
The princes of Liechtenstein owned this corner of southern Moravia for centuries, and they treated it as a canvas. Over more than three hundred years they shaped a landscape of about 200 square kilometres between the towns of Lednice and Valtice, with palaces, hunting lodges, ponds, avenues and follies set out as part of a single garden. UNESCO listed it in 1996 as one of the largest artificial landscapes in Europe, and the effect is that you pass from one scene to another as if you were walking through a painting.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Pleasure Garden closes the day.
Leg by leg
Pleasure Garden to Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc
Pleasure Garden → Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc to Tugendhat Villa in Brno
Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc → Tugendhat Villa in Brno is 85 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Tugendhat Villa in Brno to Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape
Tugendhat Villa in Brno → Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape to back through Tugendhat Villa in Brno
Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape → back through Tugendhat Villa in Brno is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tugendhat Villa in Brno to back through Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc
back through Tugendhat Villa in Brno → back through Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc is 85 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc to Pleasure Garden
back through Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc → Pleasure Garden is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.