Visiting the Czech and the Slovak Republics

 We depart from Ceske Budejovice (LKCS), Czech Republic. Only 6 miles north is our first POI, Hlbuoká Castle [WP1]. Hluboká is one of the most famous and most frequently visited castles in the country. In the second half of the 13th century, a Gothic castle was built at the site. During its history, the castle was rebuilt several times. It was first expanded during the Renaissance period, then rebuilt into a Baroque castle at the order of Adam Franz von Schwarzenberg at the beginning of the 18th century. It reached its current appearance during the 19th century when Johann Adolf II von Schwarzenberg ordered the reconstruction of the castle in the romantic style of England's Windsor Castle.

The Schwarzenbergs obtained the castle in 1661 when Johann Adolf, Prince of Schwarzenberg bought it from the heirs of Baltasar Marradas. They lived in Hluboká until the end of 1939 when the last owner (Adolph Schwarzenberg) emigrated overseas to escape from the word not allowed. The Schwarzenbergs lost all of their Czech property through a special legislative Act, the Lex Schwarzenberg, in 1947.

We continue and land at Line (LKLN).

After departure, we overfly the city of Pilsen [WP2] and reach our next stop, Horovice (LKHV).

On the way to our next POI, we overfly a large quarry [WP3] and reach the next POI, Karlštejn Castle [WP4], a large Gothic castle founded in 1348 by King Charles IV. The castle served as a place for the safekeeping of the Imperial Regalia as well as the Bohemian Crown Jewels, holy relics, and other royal treasures. Karlštejn is among the most famous and most frequently visited castles in the country.

The Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV personally supervised the construction works and interior decoration. Construction was finished nearly twenty years later in 1365 when the "heart" of the treasury – the Chapel of the Holy Cross situated in the Great Tower – was consecrated.

Following the outbreak of the Hussite Wars, the Imperial Regalia were evacuated in 1421 and brought via Hungary to Nuremberg. In 1422, during the siege of the castle, Hussite attackers used biological warfare when Prince Sigismund Korybut used catapults to throw dead (but not plague-infected) bodies and 2,000 carriage loads of dung over the walls, apparently managing to spread infection among the defenders.

Later, the Bohemian crown jewels were moved back to the castle and kept there for almost two centuries, with some short breaks. The castle underwent several reconstructions: in late Gothic style after 1480, and in Renaissance style in the last quarter of the 16th century. In 1487, the big tower was damaged by fire, and during the 16th century, there were several adaptations. During the Thirty Years' War in 1619, the coronation jewels and the archive were brought to Prague, and in 1620, the castle was turned over to Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor. After having been conquered in 1648 by Swedes, it fell into disrepair. Finally, a neo-Gothic reconstruction was carried out by Josef Mocker between 1887 and 1899, giving the castle its present look.

The nearby village was founded during the construction of the castle and bore its name until it was renamed Buda in the wake of the Hussite Wars. Renamed Budňany in the 18th century, it was merged with Poučník and called Karlštejn. There is a golf club named after the castle nearby.

We land at Prague’s international airport (LKPR).

We head back south for about 17 miles and reach an interesting part of the river Moldau [WP5], when it makes several bends in short succession. We land at Benesov (LKBE).

Turning north, we reach Konopiště Castle [WP6]. Konopiště Castle is a four-winged, three-story castle located in Konopiště, now a part of the town of Benešov. It has become famous as the last residence of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, whose assassination in Sarajevo triggered World War I. The bullet that killed him, fired by Gavrilo Princip, is now an exhibit at the castle's remote museum.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria bought Konopiště in 1887 with his inheritance from the deposed Francis V, Duke of Modena. He had it repaired between 1889 and 1894 by the architect Josef Mocker into a luxurious residence, suitable for a future Emperor, which he preferred to his official residence, the Belvedere, Vienna. The extensive 225 ha (550-acre) English landscape garden with terraces, a rose garden, and statues, was established at the same time.

Since 1921, the castle has been the property of the Czechoslovak and later the Czech state, one of 90 such properties in state ownership. The Ministry of Culture was said to spend more than US$800,000 per year to maintain the castle, and it recovers about as much from entrance ticket sales and rental fees for occasional functions.

We continue north, and visit the city of Prague [WP7] before we land at Kbely (LKKB).

We continue north-east and overfly Ještěd Tower [WP8].  It is a television transmitter on the top of Mount Ještěd. It is 94 m (308 ft) high. It is made of reinforced concrete shaped in a hyperboloid form. The construction itself took seven years to finish (1966–1973).

The hyperboloid shape was chosen since it naturally extends the silhouette of the hill and well resists the extreme climate conditions on the summit of Mount Ještěd. The design combines the operation of a mountain-top hotel and a television transmitter. The hotel and the restaurant are located in the lowest sections of the tower. Before the construction of the current hotel, two huts stood near the mountain summit: one was built in the middle of the 19th century and the other was added in the early 20th century. Both buildings had a wooden structure and both burned to the ground in the 1960s.

The tower is one of the dominant features of the North Bohemian landscape. The gallery on the ground floor and the restaurant on the first-floor offer views as far as Poland and Germany. The tower has been on the list of Czech cultural monuments since 1998, becoming a national cultural monument in 2006. In 2007 it was entered into the Tentative List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The next stop is at Hodkovice (LKHD).

About 7 miles further south are the Hruboskalské skalní město sandstone rock formations [WP9]. Four miles southwest is Kost Castle [WP10]. It was founded by Beneš von Wartenberg before 1349 as a possible construction site and was completed by his sons Peter and Marquard von Wartenberg in a high gothic style. It retains most of the original features and is overall very well preserved and maintained.

The castle is known for its donjon, so-called Bílá věž ("white tower"), protected by two circles of fortress walls. During centuries some more buildings were built near the castle and joined to it.

Unlike most other castles in Bohemia, it does not lie on a hill, but on a spit between two brooks. Another peculiarity is the tower, which has a trapezoid-like ground plan. The trapezoidal tower has the corners facing the areas of most likely catapult attacks. This is to make the missiles glance off the tower walls instead of hitting them head-on, thereby minimizing damage.

We continue to Hradec Kalove (LKHK).

About 40 miles south is our next POI, the Pilgrimage Church of Saint John of Nepomuk [WP11].  It is a religious building, near the historical border between Moravia and Bohemia. It is the final work of Jan Santini Aichel, a Bohemian architect who combined the Borrominiesque Baroque with references to Gothic elements in both construction and decoration.

In 1719, when the Roman Catholic Church declared the tongue of John of Nepomuk to be incorruptible, work started to build a church at Zelená hora, where the future saint had received his early education. It was consecrated immediately after John's beatification in 1720, although construction works lumbered on until 1727. Half a century later, after a serious fire, the shape of the roof was altered.

The church, with many furnishings designed by Santini himself, is remarkable for its Gothicizing features and complex symbolism, quite unusual for the time. In 1994, it was declared a World Heritage Site. The nomination dossier pointed out Santini's mathematical ratios in its architecture which aimed at "the creation of an independent spatial reality", with "the number 5 being dominant in the layout and proportions" of the church. The central church along with its adjacent cloister is a uniformly projected and built structure. The architecture of this building is very minimalistic and enormously effective. It combines Baroque and Gothic elements which in fact points to the age when John of Nepomuk lived, worked, and was martyred. The construction of the church is based on the geometry of a circle while constantly repeating the number five as a reference to Nepomuk's five stars. Those stars, according to a legend, appeared above his body when he had died.

This is a good example of how Santini used to project his structures—practically just by using a compass to draft the whole building on arcs of circles whose radius was generally multiple of the building's module. In the case of the church of Saint Jan Nepomuk Santini used number 5, Nepomuk's stars, number 3 which references the Trinity, and number 6 which references  Saint Mary because John of Nepomuk was perceived as her adorer. Therefore, on the perimeter of the church take turns five chapels with triangular ground plan and five with oval ground plan. At the same time, the whole church resembles cut through the choir of a Gothic cathedral and its buttress. The centrality of Nepomuk's church builds up a vertical as a symbolical phenomenon. This very vertical tends to raise visitors to look up to the symbolic heaven.

On the way to our next landing at Turany (LKTB), we overfly the city of Brno [WP12].

Further south we reach the Lednice–Valtice Cultural Landscape [WP13]. In 1996, the Lednice-Valtice Area was registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List because of its unique mix of Baroque, Neoclassical, and neo-Gothic architecture, and its history as a cultural landscape designed intentionally by a single family. It is adjacent to the Pálava Landscape Protected Area (Pálava Biosphere Reserve), a biosphere reserve registered by UNESCO several years before. The proximity of two cultural landscapes protected by UNESCO is unique. The House of Liechtenstein acquired a castle in Lednice in 1249, which marked the beginning of their settlement in the area. It remained the principal Liechtenstein residence for 700 years, until 1939 and World War II.

The Dukes of Liechtenstein transformed their properties into one large and designed private park between the 17th and 20th centuries. During the 19th century, the Dukes continued transforming the area into a large traditional English landscape park. The Baroque and neo-Gothic architecture of their chateaux are married with smaller buildings and a landscape that was fashioned according to the English principles of landscape architecture.

In 1715 these two chateaux (castles) were connected by a landscape allée and road, later renamed for the poet Petr Bezruč. A substantial part of the cultural landscape complex is covered in pine forests, known as the "Pine−wood" (Boří les), and in areas adjacent to the Thaya River with riparian forests. In 1918 the region became part of the new Czechoslovakia. The Liechtenstein family opposed the annexation of Czech territory into Sudetenland by word not allowed Germany, and as a consequence their properties were confiscated by the word not allowed, and the family then relocated to Vaduz in 1939. After World War II the family made several legal attempts for restitution of the properties. Post-war, they had passed into the ownership of Czechoslovakia: its Communist regime did not support returning large estates to exiled aristocratic landowners.

After the Czechoslovakian Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Liechtenstein descendants again renewed legal attempts for restitution, which were denied by the Czech state, the present-day owner of the properties.

We turn east, cross into Slovakia and reach Čachtice Castle [WP14). It is a castle ruin on a hill featuring rare plants and has been declared a national nature reserve for this reason. The castle was a residence and later the prison of the Countess and alleged serial killer Elizabeth Báthory.

Čachtice was built in the mid-13th century by Kazimir from the Hont-Pázmány gens as a sentry on the road to Moravia. Later, it belonged to Matthew Csák, the Stibor family, and then to Elizabeth Báthory. Čachtice, its surrounding lands, and villages was a wedding gift from the Nádasdy family upon Elizabeth's marriage to Ferenc Nádasdy in 1575.

Originally, Čachtice was a Romanesque castle with an interesting horseshoe-shaped residence tower. It was turned into a Gothic castle later and its size was increased in the 15th and 16th centuries. A Renaissance renovation followed in the 17th century. In 1708 the castle was captured by the rebels of Francis II Rákóczi. It was neglected and burned down in 1799. It was left to decay until it was turned into a tourist attraction in 2014.

We land at Piestany (LZPP).

Our final POI for this flight is Bojnice Castle [WP15]. It is a Romanesque castle with some original Gothic and Renaissance elements built in the 12th century. Bojnice Castle is one of the most visited castles in Slovakia, receiving hundreds of thousands of visitors every year and also being a popular filming stage for fantasy and fairy-tale movies. It was owned by Hungarian kings and noblemen from the 12th century until the territory became part of Czechoslovakia after the Treaty of Trianon in 1920 and was acquired by a Czech entrepreneur in 1939.

The last famous castle owner, Hungarian Count János Ferenc Pálffy (1829-1908), made a complex romantic reconstruction from 1888 to 1910 and created today's imitation of French castles of the Loire Valley. He not only had the castle built, but also was the architect and graphic designer. He utilized his artistic taste and love for collecting pieces of art. He was one of the greatest collectors of antiques, tapestries, drawings, paintings, and sculptures of his time. After his death and long quarrels, his heirs sold many precious pieces of art from the castle and then, on 25 February 1939, sold the castle, the health spa, and the surrounding land to Czech entrepreneur Jan Antonín Baťa (owner of the shoe company Bata).

After 1945, when Baťa's property was confiscated by the Czechoslovak government, the castle became the seat of several state institutions. On 9 May 1950, a fire broke out in the castle, but it was rebuilt at government expense. After this reconstruction, a museum specializing in the documentation and presentation of the era of architectural neo-styles was opened here. Bojnice Museum is now part of the Slovak National Museum today.

We finish the flight at Trencin (LZTN).

There are 5 freeware sceneries available:

Ceske Budejovice Airport (LKCS) for Microsoft Flight Simulator | MSFS

LKLN_Plzen-Line_MSFS_v1.1 for Microsoft Flight Simulator | MSFS

https://flightsim.to/file/51488/lkkb-kbely

https://flightsim.to/file/1580/lktb-brno-turany-airport

https://flightsim.to/file/3793/lztn-trencin-airport-slovakia

The complete package is here. You may want to omit the ortho sceneries due to some color changes.

Additionally, Prague’s airport Vaclav Havel (LKPR) is available from ORBX.

 

Flight plans are available here.

Aircraft: The flight has 458 miles and 9 landings. We want to cruise at about 180 knots. I will probably the BlackSquare Analog Bonanza. Please fly what you like.

Time and weather: Please set your simulator for a 10 am local departure. We try real weather.

 

Particulars:

•           Date and time: Saturday Jul 29, 18:00 UTC
•           https://discord.gg/cgNm9Fh3
•           MFS Multiplayer: US Eastcoast Server

If you want to help others enjoy the multiplayer experience, don't forget to enter your aircraft details on the multiplayer spreadsheet (linked here). Your courtesy will save others a lot of time and effort. Thanks!

 

Hello to the group from London, England!  Enjoyed Iceland, survived the musical Hamilton, and am looking forward to a flight on Wednesday... in a Comanche..?

Hi Bert,

welcome back to our flights! The Comanche is ok, maybe just a bit on the slow side for this trip.

Saturday August 5 in Norway. Designed for your new Comanche! We aim to please. 😉