Litomysl Things to Do

The parish church of Litomysl may be found opposite of the Piarist convent and your first impression will be that beautiful sandstone entrance-gate in the back.
Click on my picture and see the fine details in the sculptured frame.
You may enter the church freely and without restrictions during the day.

When you enter the park of Litomysl - palace you have to walk through an old tower-gate, that is beautifully decorated with plenty of great frescos, like on my picture.
That part of the palace seems to be one of the oldest and the gate is obviously open all night ( I checked it myself until midnight in summer 2004)

You might need at least 1 hour to explore the main sights and most beautiful facades on the mainsquare of Litomysl. I had 2 hours in the evening and 6 hours the next morning for the Portmonium, the palace, the townsquare and a nice lunch.
When you click on my picture you may see that most of the buildings had a seperate baroque facade in front of a gothic building with steep roofs, that were completyl hidden behind the extra-high facades. For that reason most of the windows on the last floor are just empty decoarations.

The building called "U rytiru"( at the knights ) is certainly the oldest building on the main square of Litomysl and also one of the most beautiful.
Click on my picture and see the fine details with sculptured knights in the sandstone-facade.
The building is used for exhibitions nowadays and has also an interesting wooden ceiling.

There are plenty of great baroque buildings on the main square of Litomysl and most of them have wide arcades for safe shopping during rain and snow. These arcades are more than 4 meters wide and also partly used for garden-cafes in summer.
It is always again nice to see these houses with facades in different colors, all matching well.

The townhall of Litomysl is in the middle of the historic townsquare and it dates back to the times, when Litomysl was an important centre of philosophers working in the convent of the piarists.
Today the town has 10.000 inhabitants and lives mainly on the few tourists coming to visit Smetana's birthplace and to attend the many music-festivals performed by the town of Litomysl.

Something quite unique is the the clock on the townhall, that shows a dial with 24 hours .

Josef Váchal was born in september 23rd, 1884 in Milavce and died in may 10th,1969. Today Vachal is mainly well known for his grafic works and his selfmade books that he edited all by himself including the grapics, text and print and sold them in a small number of copies. When he was still alive not many people were interested in his books , most of them were collected by Josef Portman (1893-1969)
The museum is open daily except Mondays:
May till October 09.00a.m.-12.00 + 01.00p.m.-05.00p.m.

Click on my picture and see the special style of Josef Vachal and the way that he did not paint and decorate only the walls and the ceiling, but also chairs, tables, beds and other furniture.
In 1991 the house and its interior were in a very poor condition and was sold to Vachal's publishing agency Paseka, who needed 2 years to have the building and the paintings restored again.
Today it looks like in the old days again and is really worth a visit !!