Žďár nad Sázavou

A Vysočina town grown from a 1252 Cistercian monastery — the monastery-turned-château of the Kinský family, with its Santini architecture, museum and café, is the reason to stop.

Žďár nad Sázavou grew up around a Cistercian monastery founded in 1252 on the marshy upper Sázava. The monastery got its great era in the early 18th century, when abbot Vejmluva brought in Santini to rebuild it and to raise the star church on Zelená hora above it. Dissolved under Joseph II in 1784, the complex became a château — today back in the hands of the Kinský family, who run it with a museum on Santini and the monastery’s history (the Museum of the New Generation) and a good café in the courtyard. The town itself is a practical base: rail and bus connections, shops, and the Žďárské vrchy beginning at its northern edge.