Chrudim

Puppet theatre in the Czech lands is not a children's sideline: travelling puppeteers played in Czech through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the language was under pressure, family puppet theatres were in ordinary households, and Czech and Slovak puppetry is on the UNESCO intangible heritage list. Chrudim is where that is gathered. The Muzeum loutkarskych kultur occupies the Mydlar house, a Renaissance building of 1573 with a distinctive gabled tower, and holds several thousand puppets - Czech marionettes and rod puppets from the eighteenth century onward, family theatres, workshop material, and a large international collection from Asia and elsewhere. The town hosts Loutkarska Chrudim, a national puppetry festival running since 1951, each summer. The old town has a square with arcades and a Gothic church, and it sits above the Chrudimka valley.

History

Finds show people here as early as the 5th millennium BC, and Slavs from the 7th-8th century; the name comes from a personal name, Chrudim. The town is first mentioned in 1055, when, according to the Chronica Boemorum, Duke Břetislav I died here. King Ottokar II founded the royal town in 1276 on the route from Prague to Moravia, and from 1307 it was a dowry town of the Bohemian queens. It sided with the Hussites at the start of the Hussite wars and stood against the Habsburgs in the uprisings of 1547 and 1618-1620, each time at a cost, and it suffered heavily in the Thirty Years' War. In the 18th and 19th centuries it lost some of its economic weight but became an educational and cultural centre, nicknamed the "Athens of Eastern Bohemia", and the railway, built in 1871, brought back its prosperity (Wikipedia, Chrudim).

The main sights

• Several thousand puppets - Czech marionettes and rod puppets from the 1700s on.
• The Mydlar house - a Renaissance building of 1573 with a gabled tower.
• An international collection - Asian and other traditions alongside the Czech.
• A national festival - Loutkarska Chrudim, held each summer since 1951.

When to go

April to October; the festival in early summer. A day.

Things to know

The museum closes on Mondays and keeps shorter winter hours. Festival week fills the town. Labelling is largely Czech, though the puppets carry themselves.

Nearby

Pardubice is twelve kilometres north; the Zelezne hory rise south.

Key facts