Brno and Western Moravia

For reasons unknown to me, my dad decided to buy bumblebees. Even more incomprehensibly, he decided to buy them in Brno, a city two hundred kilometres away. While I have yet come to comprehend why exactly we need Moravian bumblebees, this strange purchase did have one upside – we got to make a trip to the second largest city in the Czech Republic, a city I had never visited before.

We arrived in Brno shortly after 10 AM but lost a lot of time trying to find a parking spot near one of Brno’s major attractions, Špilberk Castle. When a spot was eventually freed up, we found that the pathway we were hoping to ascend was closed, so we decided to park nearer to the city centre. We did not have enough time, therefore, to tour the castle, but we did see much of what Brno has to offer: various churches, elegant city architecture, and a town hall with a taxidermized crocodile from the sixteenth century (the “Brno Dragon”). My sister and I also clambered up the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Paul, where I found out that my fear of heights has not eased in the slightest since the last time I tried something similar.

On a whim, we decided to visit Třebíč. This was after my mum called my dad to express dissatisfaction about the planned purchase of bumblebees and the entire plan was called off. Yes, that is the sort of people we are. People who will drive 200 kilometres to Brno to buy bumblebees and then decide we don’t want them after all.

We began our tour of Třebíč with a stop at the Basilica of St. Procopius, which is inscribed in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites together with the town’s Jewish quarter. The basilica, which dates to the twelfth century, is particularly noteworthy for its fusing of Romanesque and Gothic features. Our subsequent visit to the Jewish quarter left a little to be desired – we joked that perhaps the UNESCO officers who assessed this quaint, but rather unremarkable place, probably neglected to visit Prague’s Jewish quarter on their way to Třebíč. The Jewish cemetery was very glamorous though.

Our last stop was the city Jihlava, which almost straddles the Moravian-Czech border. Of the cities we visited, Jihlava was perhaps the most pleasant: not as vast and as difficult to fit into a tight schedule as Brno, and not as small as Třebíč. I think the most impressive sight in the city is the Church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a seventeenth-century structure that towers over Masaryk Square. Also worth seeing is the Gate of the Holy Mother, the only remaining gate of the city’s original fortifications. It was originally built in the thirteenth century but has undergone several reconstructions since then – hence the eclectic exterior.