Hrob

A small town under the Krušné hory scarp whose Protestant church, demolished in 1617, helped spark the Thirty Years' War — its foundations are preserved as a memorial.

Hrob is a small mining-era town at the foot of the eastern Krušné hory, and an unlikely place to have helped start a European war. The Lutheran church built here in 1614 was closed by the Prague archbishop and razed by soldiers on 11 December 1617 — an act the Protestant estates took as proof that the imperial promise of religious freedom was worthless. Six months later came the Defenestration of Prague, and with it the Thirty Years’ War. The excavated foundations of the demolished church are preserved in the town as a memorial.

For hikers Hrob is mainly a trailhead: it has a railway station on the line below the mountains, and marked trails climb straight out of town onto the Krušné hory plateau.