Czechia · Old Town
Český Krumlov
A self-guided walking tour of the Český Krumlov Old Town, every street in one day.
Every street on the menu.
Every street in the Old Town of Český Krumlov is a line of dots you collect by walking it. I have been lying in one of them for six hundred years and I am still not finished.
At a glance
Plan your walk.
- Distance
- 8.2 km
- Time
- about 2.5 hours
- Streets
- 35
- Steps
- 5 streets with steps
- Start point
- hrad a zámek Český Krumlov
- Phone needed while walking
- no
- Works offline
- yes
- Expires
- never
The Old Town
Every street, drawn.
Every lane inside that line is a course. The circles are fruit.
Landmarks
What I would eat first.
Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.
hrad a zámek Český Krumlov 1,500 points
The round tower is the one you can see from everywhere, painted from foot to top in bands of colour that no other tower here bothers with. Visitors are allowed up it. From the gallery the whole bend lies open below you, with every lane you have already eaten laid out in it.
Pivovar Eggenberg 500 points
A yard on the river side with a gate you can walk straight through. Go in, stand in the middle, and look up at the roofs closing it on three sides. The lane outside smells of the place long before you get there, which is how I find it in the dark.
Plášťový most 500 points
You meet this one twice: once from beneath, where it looks like a mistake in the rock, and once from the walkway on it, where you find out how far down the bottom is. The best view of the town is from the middle of it. The best view of it is from the lane below. Take both.
svatý Vít 500 points
The tall one on the town side. Its tower turns up over the rooftops from almost every lane in the loop, which is what you steer by down there. Go in when the door is open and look straight up. The ceiling is the best part of it and nobody ever photographs the ceiling.
Lazebnický most 250 points
Everything funnels through here. It is short, it is crowded, and most of the people on it are aiming a phone in exactly the same direction. Point yours the other way, upstream, where the water swings into the bend. Then keep moving, because this is the one spot where standing still turns you into furniture.
Městský pivovar 250 points
The far western end of the level, past the point where the crowds give up. The lanes out here are wider and emptier, and behind an ordinary gate there is a long yard that nobody is queueing for. Go and look, then walk back up. Somebody has to eat the quiet ones.
most Dr. E. Beneše 250 points
The plain one. A road, a pavement and a great deal of air underneath. Nobody stops on it, which is its entire attraction: for thirty seconds the river is yours alone, and thirty seconds is a long time when you are made of rock.
Regionální muzeum v Českém Krumlově 250 points
Stop outside before you go in. The terrace in front of it hangs out over the roofs below, with the rock and its tower filling the far side. Then go in, because there is one thing in there I would eat if anybody let me near it.
Eating
Actual food.
The Vltava rises up in the Šumava forest and comes down through this town, and the cooking came down with it. Up there it meant potatoes, mushrooms, peas and sauerkraut, and the lard to cook them in. The town's own addition is a blue cheese, first made here in 1951. Nobody expects blue cheese from potato country. I certainly did not.
Meat and fish
One dish, and that is deliberate. The meat on the menus here is the Czech set, roast pork, goulash, svíčková and duck, the same plates the whole country eats. The one this corner can call its own is the Kaplice pancake, so that is the one I am pointing at.
Cmunda po kaplicku
A potato pancake with smoked pork and sauerkraut on top. A chef in Kaplice, just down the road, put it together for guests who turned up hungry after closing time. The pancake underneath is far older. It was poor people's food on both sides of the Šumava before the First World War, and the pork was the part hardly anyone could afford.
Sources: BurdaMedia, FTV Prima, Jihočeská centrála cestovního ruchu, Vltava Labe Media
Vegetarian
Two dishes. The old South Bohemian kitchen stood on potatoes, cabbage and mushrooms, and most of what it made was fried in lard or finished with bacon. The cheese and the soup are the two that manage without.
Jihočeská Niva
Blue cheese, and this town is where it started, in 1951. The name belongs to all of South Bohemia now. Europe protects it, and only milk from the region may go in. I find it restful that a cheese has a border.
Whether it is vegetarian depends on the rennet. Check the label or ask.
Sources: EUR-Lex
Kulajda
A thick white soup of potatoes, mushrooms and dill, sharpened with a little vinegar, with a poached egg in the bowl. The name most likely comes from a dialect word for thickening. A nicer story says it is a South Bohemian cook called Adelajda Kuhová, worn down to two syllables. I would like the cook to be true.
Ask what the soup is started on. Some kitchens use meat stock.
Sources: Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR, Vltava Labe Media, Pavel Kratochvíl, Jihočeská centrála cestovního ruchu
Vegan
One dish, and history is the reason. Cottage food in the Šumava was potatoes, peas, groats and sauerkraut, which sounds like plant food until you see the lard it went into. The barley and peas survive the swap to oil. Most of the rest does not.
Kočičí svatba
Pearl barley and peas, cooked together with garlic, onion and marjoram. It is one of the oldest Czech country dishes, and down here in the south it is called a cats' wedding. Nobody has ever explained the cats to me.
It is usually finished with lard, bacon or cracklings. Ask for it with oil and without the bacon.
Sources: Česká televize, FTV Prima, Recepty.cz
Late breakfast
Café Kolektiv where locals go
Latrán 13
A café on Latrán, the street between the bridge and the castle gate. The cakes come from its own pastry kitchen, the coffee from a roaster in Prague, and a coffee guide lists breakfast and lunch. Tables go outside when the sun is out. I start with the cakes and call that breakfast too.
- Mon08:00–20:00
- Tue08:00–20:00
- Wed08:00–20:00
- Thu08:00–20:00
- Fri08:00–21:00
- Sat08:00–21:00
- Sun08:00–20:00
Sources: European Coffee Trip
Afternoon coffee
Pražírna kávy Ideál come for the one thing: the coffee roasted in the room
Horská 70
The first roastery in Krumlov, a little way out of the Old Town. The beans are roasted here, and several origins go through both the espresso machine and the French press. The room is tiny. A few chairs along the counter, old cups and mugs like a grandmother's kitchen, and sacks of green coffee to sit on. Raw beans under me, roasted ones in the cup. The whole trade in one small room.
- Mon09:30–18:00
- Tue09:30–18:00
- Wed09:30–18:00
- Thu09:30–18:00
- Fri09:30–18:00
- Sat09:30–18:00
- Sun09:30–17:00
There are only a few seats. If the counter is full, take a bag of beans away instead.
Sources: Vltava Labe Media, European Coffee Trip
Masná 130 where locals go
Masná 130
A Renaissance house on Masná that stood neglected for decades, not even on the sewer, until two local entrepreneurs bought it in 2016. Two years of work turned the ground floor into this café, and it has become where the town itself meets. Espresso, filter, cold brew and breakfast. Five hundred years is a long wait for a coffee machine. I call it reasonable.
Shut on Mondays and Tuesdays, and it closes in the late afternoon.
Sources: European Coffee Trip
Dinner
Papa's Living Restaurant the old one
Latrán 13
A restaurant on Latrán with a covered terrace looking out over the river. A food guide counts it among the first houses in the Old Town to take cooking seriously, and says it has held that standard for more than twenty years. The kitchen is international with a Czech lean. Pizza and homemade pasta, then kulajda with porcini, or pike-perch with horseradish sauce and a potato croquette. The porcini go into the soup and the soup goes into me. That is as far as my plan goes.
- Mon11:00–16:00, 17:30–22:00
- Tue11:00–16:00, 17:30–22:00
- Wed11:00–16:00, 17:30–22:00
- Thu11:00–16:00, 17:30–22:00
- Fri11:00–16:00, 17:30–22:00
- Sat11:00–16:00, 17:30–22:00
- Sun11:00–16:00, 17:30–22:00
It closes between four and half past five in the afternoon.
Sources: Gault & Millau Czechia, Maurerův výběr
Hospoda Na Louži where locals go
Kájovská 66
A family pub on Kájovská, on the ground floor of an old house in the Old Town. The name is the spot's old local nickname, and it means At the Puddle. Seven tables under a wall of old advertising signs, and a kitchen that keeps to the Czech classics, roast pork, goulash, svíčková and roast duck. The name is a puddle. The plate is duck. I know which one I came for.
- Mon10:00–23:00
- Tue10:00–23:00
- Wed10:00–23:00
- Thu10:00–23:00
- Fri10:00–23:00
- Sat10:00–23:00
- Sun10:00–23:00
It is small, so a group wants a table booked ahead.
Sources: Maurerův výběr
Checked 26 September 2026.
Name origin
Why it is called Český Krumlov.
Krumlov comes from the German Krumme Aue, a crooked meadow. The name describes the ground rather than the man who owned it, and the ground here is one hard bend of river. The oldest spelling anyone kept is Chrumbenowe, written into a charter in 1253. A town named after its own shape. The shape got there first.
Sources: encyklopedie.ckrumlov.cz
Why here
Somebody stood here and decided.
Look at the river. The Vltava comes in, ties itself into a knot and leaves again, and everything old here is inside that knot or hanging onto it. On the outside of the bend a rock ridge stands high over the water, and that is where the fortress went. The lanes below it grew to keep it fed. The other half of this level sits inside the loop, laid out on open ground with a square in the middle. Two halves, one river, and the river did all the work.
Sources: www.npu.cz; www.zamek-ceskykrumlov.cz; encyklopedie.ckrumlov.cz
Why then
When the first stone went down.
There is no founding day here. There is a fortress. The lords of Krumlov put a Gothic one on the rock sometime before 1250, and by 1253 one of them is signing a charter as a witness, named after the bend he lived in. The town came second and came twice: the working lanes under the rock first, then a planned half laid out on empty ground across the water. Nobody chose this place for the view. They chose it because the river left a rock where a rock was useful.
Sources: www.zamek-ceskykrumlov.cz; encyklopedie.ckrumlov.cz; encyklopedie.ckrumlov.cz
Who ruled
Everyone who thought they owned this.
I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.
- 1250–1302
The lords of Krumlov, one branch of a large and well-connected family called the Vítkovci. They built the first fortress on the rock and gave the place its name in writing. Then the branch simply ran out of people in 1302 and everything they held went sideways to their relatives.
Sources: www.zamek-ceskykrumlov.cz
- 1302–1602
The Rosenbergs, for three hundred years. That is the stretch that decided what this town looks like, and their red rose is still on the shield and on this icon. It ended for an ordinary reason: Petr Vok had no direct heir, so he sold the estate to the emperor and the longest tenancy on this rock closed with a receipt.
Sources: encyklopedie.ckrumlov.cz
- 1602–1622
The emperor owned it, and ownership was as far as it went. Rudolf II bought the estate with the castle at the turn of 1601 and 1602, and twenty years later his successor Ferdinand II handed the whole thing on to a prince who had been useful. Twenty years. The shortest stretch anyone has held this rock, and the only owner who was happier somewhere else.
Sources: www.zamek-ceskykrumlov.cz
- 1622–1719
The Eggenbergs, who arrived in 1622 and made Krumlov the seat of a princedom rather than a country house. They also put their three ravens on the town shield. Then they ran out of descendants in 1719, which by now you will recognise as the local way of changing owner.
Sources: encyklopedie.ckrumlov.cz; www.zamek-ceskykrumlov.cz
- 1719–1947
The Schwarzenbergs, and this is the long one: two hundred and twenty-eight years, longer than most countries manage a constitution. The baroque half of everything you walk past up on the rock is theirs. It ended in 1947, when the family's property was transferred into Czech provincial ownership.
Sources: encyklopedie.ckrumlov.cz
- 1947–
Everybody. The family property went into Czech provincial ownership in 1947 and to the state in 1950, and the castle has been a place you buy a ticket for ever since. Seven hundred years of one family at a time, and now the gate is simply open. I have no opinion about politics and a very strong one about open gates.
Sources: www.zamek-ceskykrumlov.cz
The emblem
What the shield means.
A rose with five petals. The town's actual shield is a great deal busier than that: a silver ashlar wall on blue with seven merlons, an empty gate with the grate hauled up, two silver towers with red roofs behind it, and between them a small silver shield where three black ravens hold a red rose in their beaks. The birds belong to the Eggenbergs, the rose to the Rosenbergs, and that arrangement was granted by privilege on 15 April 1671. The icon keeps the rose and drops the rest, because a wall with two towers is a grey smudge at this size. Five petals, and the old family legend counts them as the five sons Vítek of Prčice split his lands between.
Sources: www.ckrumlov.cz; encyklopedie.ckrumlov.cz; encyklopedie.ckrumlov.cz
Emblem: Public domain — official coat of arms (Wikimedia Commons)
Three facts
Three things I know about this place.
For three hundred years this was not one place but two. The quarter under the rock, Latrán, was its own settlement with its own rules, the streets across the water were another, and the two of them spent generations arguing about whose privileges applied where. On 14 August 1555 Wilhelm of Rosenberg joined them into a single town and the arguing stopped. You will pass from one into the other several times today. You will not feel it. I do.
Sources: encyklopedie.ckrumlov.cz
There are bears in the castle moat, and there have been since 1707, when four of them moved in. The reason is a family story. The Rosenbergs liked to say they were kin to the Orsini of Rome, orsa is Italian for a she-bear, and the animal is how they laid claim to the connection. An entire enclosure, in support of a surname. Bears were already being kept up there in the second half of the 1500s, under the last of that family.
Sources: castle.ckrumlov.cz
The thing on the rock is not a building, it is a district. Five courtyards and forty-one buildings climb the ridge from the lanes below, and a very large garden closes the far end. Three of those courtyards are streets in this level, and they are numbered rather than named, which tells you what the place had turned into. Since 1992 the whole arrangement, town and rock together, has been on the World Heritage list.
Sources: www.npu.cz
Street words
What the names on the signs mean.
- most
- A bridge. Lazebnický most, Plášťový most, most Dr. E. Beneše. Three of them in a town this small, because a river that doubles back on itself leaves you no choice.
- nádvoří
- A courtyard. Up on the rock they are numbered instead of named: I. nádvoří, III. nádvoří, IV. nádvoří. An address in Roman numerals is a sign that somebody stopped counting rooms and started counting yards.
- klášterní
- Of the monastery. Klášterní, Klášterní dvůr, Klášter klarisek, Kláštery Český Krumlov: a whole block of names on the Latrán side, all of them pointing at the same set of walls.
- hrad / zámek
- Czech keeps two words where English has one. A hrad is the fortress you put on a rock to hold it; a zámek is what the fortress becomes once somebody would rather live comfortably. Here the same lump of rock is both, which is why the streets to it are Zámek and Zámecké schody, the castle steps.
- hradní / hradební
- Two names one letter apart and not the same word at all. Hradní belongs to the hrad, the fortress. Hradební belongs to the hradby, the town walls. They sit at opposite ends of this level, which is the only reason anybody keeps them straight.
- ulice
- Street. You will hardly ever see it written, because Czech puts the adjective on the sign and leaves the noun off. Široká is the wide one, Dlouhá the long one, Masná the meat one, Soukenická the cloth one, Rybářská the fish one. Only Řemeslná ulička keeps the word, and only as a small one.
The size of it
Walk it in a day: Český Krumlov in numbers.
Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.
- 35streets
- 449dots
- 6.6km of street
- 8.2km on foot
- 2.5hours at a stroll
The game
Your first city is free.
Cobble Gobble is a walking game for iPhone. Claim any city as your free one. Every other city is a one-time purchase you keep for good, Family Sharing included, and a city you own plays fully offline.