Kadan

Kadan stands on a rock above the Ohre and kept an unusually complete medieval circuit: walls, bastions and gates around a compact old town on the bluff, with the castle at one end. Its best-known feature is Katova ulicka, the Executioner's Lane, a passage running between the town wall and the backs of the houses which narrows to about sixty-six centimetres - roughly two feet - making it one of the narrowest streets in Europe and genuinely impassable for two people at once. The town hall tower of the fifteenth century leans and is climbable. There is a Franciscan monastery of the 1470s outside the walls with a cloister and a Gothic portal, and a large arcaded square. Kadan sits between the Ore Mountains and the brown-coal basin, and the contrast between the preserved old town and the industrial landscape outside is sharp.

What you actually see

• The Executioner's Lane - a passage narrowing to about sixty-six centimetres.
• A complete wall circuit - bastions and gates around the bluff-top old town.
• A leaning town hall tower - fifteenth-century, climbable.
• A Franciscan monastery - of the 1470s with a cloister, outside the walls.

When to go

April to October. A day.

Honest expectations

The lane is genuinely narrow and awkward with a bag or a pushchair. The tower and museum close on Mondays. The surrounding landscape is industrial and post-mining.

Nearby

Klasterec nad Ohri is upstream; Chomutov is east.