*The Králíky military museum and WWII fortification education trail: 6 km (extendable)*

• In the 1930’s the Czech border region was strongly fortified against the threat of Nazi Germany, with concrete bunkers, underground tunnels and artillery fortresses. The northeastern section of the border was the most heavily fortified, none more so than the area around the border town of Králíky, which was clearly identified as a potential weak spot, with one of the few low border passes into the Kłodzko region (which at that time was a Czecholosavak/German border area) just to the north of the town. The Czech defense strategy was to ensure an invading army could not split the Czech army in two by pushing through the central part of the northern border.
• In the end, of course, the fortifications were never used against the Germans. The 1938 Munich agreement ceded the territory in which the strongest fortifications had been constructed. The impressive fortifications simply became target practice in training activities for the occupying German army after 1939. Hitler even came for an inspection visit in December 1938. Many of the bunkers and fortresses in this area have therefore survived and are gradually being opened to the public, the largest of which are effectively mini military museums.
• Králíky also has an excellent full-sized military museum. A 5 km education trail links the fortifications on the north side of town with the main museum. It is well done, with multilingual information boards describing the purposes of the bunkers and artillery fortresses. Adding to the attraction of this short historical walk, Králíky has a pleasant town center with a couple of nice cafés, the best of which is probably Kavárna Reichl which has a pleasant garden area (map point 9).
• The overall route (7 km if walking to/from the bus station and diverting to the café Reichl) involves some gentle hills, mostly on easy meadow footpaths with about 150m of height to ascend-descend, none of which is on steep paths. The walk can easily be extended to include the pilgrimage site, Hora Matky Boží, located some 2 km south east of Králíky. The standalone walk to the site, which also starts in Králíky town center, can be found here.

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

Directions

• Králíky is on various regional bus and train routes, but if driving there is parking in and around the town center
• From the bus station, take the GREEN trail for 350m to reach the main square
• The education trail leaves for the main square and is marked with classic green/white diagonal markers
• The education trail follows the RED trail as far as the Pod Hůrkou junction, which is reached after 500m
• The trail then runs in a loop from Pod Hůrkou. It is suggested to take the route anticlockwise, with the last stop being the military museum. As the markers are quite sporadic, it is a route best followed using gps and the mapy.com application, or a good paper map
• Return back to the main square from the museum along the RED trail
• If planning on visiting the Café Reichl, it is 300m along the RED trail heading in the opposite direction from the fortification trail