An historical tour around the capital of East Bohemia, Hradec Králové – 3 km

• Hradec Králové is the capital of East Bohemia and a good location as a base for touring this interesting historical region. The city has a long history, dating back to Slavic times, but it became one of the most important towns in the kingdom during the high Middle Ages. Since then it has accumulated a wealth of different architectural styles, including a Modernist flavour in the early 20th century.
• The city has created a number of marked tours around the city, focusing on different themes (the longest route focuses on showcasing the different architectural styles, including a tour around the new town). The shortest focuses on the historical old town and is less than 3 km long.
• The old town route is reproduced in the map below, but it is easiest followed by taking the directions mentioned on the 13 multilingual information boards (the old town historical tour is characterised by BROWN information boards). The route is approximately 2.4 km long with only a very small height difference, but if walking with a stroller there are a couple of short step sections to navigate.
• There are many good cafés and other refreshment options throughout the old town, but consider a visit to the excellent Šatlava restaurant (with its summer and winter terraces) just off Dlouhá street, and on the main square try the Italian café and wine bar, Casa del Prosecco, with its elegant seating.

Note: click ‘Show on Mapy.com’  to go to a full screen version of the route directly on the mapy.com site. This can be used for on line navigation, saved or exported as a GPX file.

Directions

• The tour starts at the twin towered Gothic cathedral in the south western corner of the main square and initially passes the white tower (which can be ascended for an excellent view)
• The routes runs anticlockwise and arrives back at the main square