Stará a Nová řeka

Jakub Krčín's 16th-century flood engineering turned nature reserve — the old Lužnice meanders feeding Rožmberk and the Nová řeka canal that carries its floods away to the Nežárka.

When Jakub Krčín built the giant Rožmberk pond (1584–90), he had to protect it from the Lužnice’s floods — so he split the river. The original bed, the Stará řeka (Old River), still winds north through floodplain forest to feed the pond; the Nová řeka (New River), a canal dug in the 1580s, takes the high water east into the Nežárka instead. Four centuries on, the engineering reads as landscape: both arms, their meanders, oxbows and alder carrs are protected as the Stará a Nová řeka national nature reserve, one of the finest riverine forests of the Třeboň basin. The dykes alongside carry quiet paths, and in autumn the mist off the water and the colour in the oaks make the case for the whole region.