Two castles, one hour apart, define the medieval landscape of central Bohemia. Krivoklat sits deep in forest that was long a royal hunting ground; behind its walls lie a Gothic hall, a chapel with a carved altarpiece, and the vaulted rooms of a residence built for a court that came here to hunt and to withdraw. Karlstejn is the opposite proposition: a fortress rising in terraces up a wooded ridge, founded by Charles IV, king of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, and conceived to protect the imperial regalia and holy relics. Its ascending sequence of towers culminates in the Chapel of the Holy Cross, one of the most celebrated interiors of the European Middle Ages. Together they let a single episode cover both faces of medieval power, the pleasures of the court and the sacred safekeeping of a crown, in some of the most filmable landscape in Czechia.
