Cervena Lhota

Cervena Lhota is a Renaissance house built in the sixteenth century on a rock outcrop that was later surrounded by water when the valley was dammed to make a pond, so the building now stands on an island with a single stone bridge to the shore, its red-rendered walls reflected in the water. That image is the reason it appears on Czech calendars, in fairy-tale films and on a large proportion of the country's tourist advertising. The interiors are modest by comparison: rooms furnished in the nineteenth-century taste of the Schoenburg-Hartenstein family, who held it until 1945, with a chapel and some good ceramics. The place is small - a square block with a courtyard - and the visit is short. Rowing boats are hired on the pond in summer, which is the way to see it from the water, and there is a path around the shore.

What you actually see

• A red house on an island - the pond dammed around the rock it stands on.
• A single stone bridge - the only access to the building.
• Nineteenth-century interiors - furnished as the last family left them.
• Boats on the pond - the view from the water in summer.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Honest expectations

It is small and the interior visit is short - the building is the picture rather than the collection. Guided tours only, seasonal. Very busy on summer weekends and the parking fills.

Nearby

Jindrichuv Hradec is east; Tabor is north.