Boskovice; clifftop castle ruins and kosher coffee

The early history of Boskovice revolves around the activities of the succession of feudal landowners; the Lords of Boskovic, Lords of Kunštát, Eders of Štiavnice, and the Zástřizlové. The noble ruling families had their seat in the imposing hilltop castle that watched over the valley for centuries, before it was cannibalised for building materials when the town came into the ownership of the Dietrichsteins. The Dietrichsteins set about converting a former monastery into an opulent Empire palace which is considered one of the finest examples of its architecture style in the land. The hillside palace houses an extensive museum recording the life and customs of the noble landowners of the last five hundred years, and another of their former residential palaces houses the city museum and palace wine cellars on Hradní Ulice. The lords of Boskovice were responsible for the building of the town hall in the late 1400s and the whole succession of noble families had a part in rebuilding and extending the monumental Church of St Jakub.

The parallel history of the Jewish community in Boskovice is not as long but just as rich. When Jews were expelled from the Moravian royal cities (Olomouc, Brno, and Znojmo) in 1454, they sought refuge in the settlements of the more tolerant nobles. The Boskovice ghetto flourished and grew to become one of the largest and most important centres of medieval Jewish culture in Moravia. Prominent residents of the community included the famous Rabbis Low and Levi-Kolin, and writer Hermann Unger. The Second World War brought about the end of the Jewish community, but it is survived by a well-preserved residential quarter, sprawling cemetery and a carefully restored synagogue.

A legend about the beginning of Boskovice tells of a hunter named Velen who sheltered and guided a feudal lord who had become lost in the forest. When Velen, despite his obviously meagre means, offered his comb as a gift, the lord decided to repay Velen’s kindnesses by granting him the fiefdom of the area. While constructing the castle from which to rule over his new lands, Velen injured his toe and cried "Již bosko více nepujdu!"-"I‘ll never walk barefoot again." Bosko Více became the name of the castle and the town that grew up below it. Velen’s coat of arms became the seven-toothed comb that remains the symbol of the town to this day.

Quick Tips:

Tourist information in Boskovice (pronounced BOS-kovitsa) is on the ground floor of the main square town hall, easily identifiable by its tall white clock tower. They have a comprehensive range of printed information available, but are not overly helpful with information about less obvious sights. For example when asked about the history of the church of St Jakub the Elder at the opposite end of the main square, and the possibility of climbing the clock tower, all the young man could offer were unapologetic "I don’t know"s.

The important buildings of the Jewish quarter are all identified by small interpretive plaques affixed to their street frontages. Many of them include diagrams and maps, but the texts are in Czech only, so it would be a good idea to either pick up the brochure with the English translations from tourist information or the synagogue, or bring along a simple pocket dictionary.

Best Way To Get Around:

Boskovice is a town of around 12,000 inhabitants which lies 41km north of Brno and 55km west of Olomouc in the lower land between the Drahan (Drahanská) and Czecho-Moravian highlands (Českomoravská vrchovina). Buses from Olomouc change at Prostějov, and trains from Brno or Prague change at Skalice nad Svitavou. The online timetables are the best place to gather transport information.

Within Boskovice, the bus and train stations are about ten minutes’ walk west of the main square. The Jewish cemetery is a fifteen minute walk from the square and to walk to the hilltop castle will take between 15 and 30 minutes, depending on how you feel about hills. A simple street map should be all that you need and they are available for free from the tourist information office. If walking presents a problem, or you would just prefer to allow a taxi-driver to handle your Boskovice transport needs, their phone numbers are 608 876877 or 608 851852.

Kafírna Dogvill is an excellent small coffee house in a historically protected building between the main square and the Jewish quarter.

The first thing you will see as you walk in is the counter with jars and jars of coffee beans spread across it for sale by the gram. If you tend to look upwards, you might next notice the row of antique coffee pots and grinders above the counter. Look down, and you’ll see that the front of the counter has been covered by mosaics depicting cups of coffee and different coffee pots.

When all this looking around tires you out and you need to sit down, you might choose one of the armchairs by the counter under the old lamp, or you might take the wicker chairs and sofa around the small round table under the window. If you’re with a few friends, you might prefer one of the larger sofas towards the rear of the café. When it’s busy enough, there are folding chairs out on the footpath in front of the shop, and on the weekend of the annual cultural festival, some people even got take-aways and sat in the gutter.

When the menu arrives, you’ll notice that Dogvill supplies coffees from all over the world; Columbia, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, to name a few. These you can choose as Czech coffee, which means the water will be poured over the grounds, or espresso, with eight grams of beans. Uncle Su-Su was particularly impressed with the meticulous preparation of our espressos at the Kafírna. When you have ordered, the beans for your coffee will be weighed then placed into the grinder and ground by themselves. From there they go to the espresso machine and the beans for another cup of coffee can be weighed.

If choosing beans from a particular part of the world seems too much trouble, it’s also possible just to order an espresso, macchiato, cappuccino, etc with the house coffee of the day. Veverka chose the tall coffee with a scoop of ice-cream that might be a good option for the sweet-tooths amongst us. The double cappuccino is definitely the best choice for those who like their coffee BIG! and our favourite Koala proclaimed her hot chocolate delicious.

I chose the Papua New Guinea coffee as an espresso and the cup arrived with crema intact, itself an accomplishment in one of the greatest beer-drinking countries of the world. The milk was warmed in a separate jug and said cup was served as all cups of coffee should be, with a small glass of water as an accompaniment. Bravo!

Kafírna Dogvill is open seven days a week, on Saturday until 9pm, and every other day until 8pm.

I think it’s quite possibly the best little coffee house in the country.

Restaurant Makkabi is a good restaurant right in the middle of the Boskovice Jewish quarter.

Although the main dining room seems quite small, it has space for around 40 diners, thanks to cleverly constructed booths along each wall. The seating is made up of long benches, rather than individual chairs, so that also allows a few extra people to squeeze in. The booths are constructed of dark paneled wood, and the panels are decorated with historic prints and photographs of the Jewish quarter. The tables are the same dark wood and the wall space above the booths is also thickly decorated with framed prints and pictures, along with a collection of antique bottles and other odds and ends. It’s quite a pleasant effect, which is good; because both times I was there it took a long time to be served and the photographs provided a welcome diversion. There’s also a small courtyard at the rear of the restaurant with enough space for about another 20 diners.

The menu features the usual range of meat and potatoes dishes, but also includes a section entitled ‘Inspiration from the Jewish kitchen’. One of the dishes in the section was a chicken fillet with orange, raisins, and almonds for 105Kc. Another was the Židovský řížek/Jewish schnitzel which was a beef fillet with garlic and onions, again for 105Kc. I chose the beef fillet with egg, and had chips (French fries) as a side order and a large glass of kofola which came to 128Kc/4.5 euros/$5.5 U.S. in total. The menu is available only in Czech and German.

There are five types of beer on tap, but the most interesting to try might be one of the Černohorska brews from the local area. Both the dark Granat and the lighter lager were available, each for 17Kc for a half-litre glass. Uncle Su-Su had the Granat and pronounced it excellent while Young Tom had the lager and enjoyed it enough to have a second glass during the long wait for our meals. When the meals eventually arrived everybody thought that they were worth the wait. The portions were generous, the beef dishes were well cooked and Veverka’s fried cheese flowed as smoothly as the nearby river Bělá.

Restaurant Makkabi is open Monday through Thursday from 11am to 11pm, on Friday and Saturday from 11am until midnight and on Sunday from 11am to 10pm.

Highly recommended for anyone who has up to 90 minutes to devote to their meal.

The entry doors of the Literární Čajovna Hermanna Ungera are cleverly fitted with glazed cabinets that display a range of both books and tea paraphernalia for sale. They probably also help to clear things up for anyone who might be wondering exactly what makes a literary teahouse different from any other teahouse.

The main bookstore room of the literary teahouse is wallpapered by well-stocked bookshelves, offering everything from books about eastern mysticism to the latest translations of English-language pageturners. There are also three low round tables accompanied by comfortable wicker chairs and a sales counter offering teas, ceramics and a few other odds-and-ends such as incense, handmade jewellery, and a small selection of clothes from south Asia.

The beverage menu is only in Czech, but offers the usual range of teas and associated drinks such as sahlep (a sweet milky drink made from powdered orchid root and popular in Turkey and Lebanon). The prices may seem a little confusing at first; the sahlep for example is 2200 haléřu. It’s not as expensive as it might seem at first glance, because Haléřu/Hellers are the small Czech aluminium coins that hardly anybody ever bothers with any more. There are 100 hellers in one crown, which makes the 2200h sahlep worth about 60 Euro cents/75 US cents. The teas vary from around 2800h to 6400h for the fine white teas, placing the Boskovice teahouse at the relatively inexpensive end of the spectrum.

In addition to the main front bookstore room, there is also a small outdoor courtyard with two small seating areas and lots of potted plants, and an atmospherically-lit side room with three or four tables and a raised platform for the ceremonially-barefoot-sitting-upon-of-cushions. The toilets have been decorated with colourful mosaics and are quite clean and refreshingly not yet EU-compliant. The staff don’t appear to be multilingual but are friendly and clearly in mastery of their tea-brewing skills. You can sample their skills from 9am-noon and 1:30pm to 8pm on weekdays, 9am until 9pm on Saturdays and 1pm-8pm on Sundays.

The teahouse is named after a native of Boskovice whose writing was sometimes compared to that of Kafka. Hermann Unger was born in Boskovice in 1893 and grew up speaking German and Czech. While at school in Brno he became active in Jewish politics, and went on to study Hebrew, Arabic and law at university. The studies were interrupted by war and Hermann was dispatched to the Russian front from where he eventually returned wounded and with a silver medal for valour. His writing career began in 1920 with Boys and Murderers, and continued with The Maimed (1922) and The Class (1927). Unger became friends with some of Prague’s most famous Jewish-German writers: Paul Kornfeld, Ernst Weiss, and Franz Werfel, and was a contemporary of Franz Kafka and Max Brod.

He died of acute appendicitis at the age of 36 in December 1929, but has not been forgotten by the tea-connoisseurs of his hometown.

The Annual Boskovice Cultural Festival in mid-July ranks among the most highly regarded cultural festivals in the country. It features music, theatre and film and proceeds go toward the continuing upkeep and restoration of the Jewish quarter.

The festival takes place over several venues within Boskovice, the most dramatic of which is the ruined hilltop castle. Within the castle there are three separate stages; two for theatre and the third for electronic dance music. Visitors are also free to wander around most of the castle grounds, but some areas are used by the performers for preparation, and are off-limits. The Kyogen theatre performances in the upper courtyard were hilarious, but it helped to understand a little Czech. The puppet and marionette shows were the most accessible of the theatre performances for non-Czech-speakers and the subterranean rooms and open courtyards of the castle made wonderful playhouses.

The outdoor cinema at the foot of the castle hill is used as the main music stage, and the big concert on Saturday night draws a huge crowd. At the 2005 festival, prominent Czech bands Umakart (alternative rock) and Tata Bojs (pop/rock) were the main acts, supported by Lu from Koprivnice, and the Roman Pokorny Trio. The palace glasshouse was the venue for smaller bands such as the various jazz groups and the experimental electronic group Paraneuro, made up of Czech and Finnish musicians. Another stage behind the museum was the venue for the likes of Jamison Young from Australia (country/folk) and the Swordfishtrombones.

A ticket for the whole weekend was 390Kc, and this allowed entry to all performances except those in the synagogue and the cinema, for which small extra charges applied (ranging from 30-70Kc). It was also possible just to pay for individual performances as you went, but seeing the main concert and two other performances was enough to make a weekend ticket worthwhile. Camping space was available for 20Kc per person in part of the lower palace gardens. There were no showers available but portable toilets were supplied, and there was a 24hr-supervised tent where you could leave your valuables for a 10Kc fee. The area between the palace glasshouse and the main music stage at the outdoor cinema was brimming with food and drink stalls, including the typical roast pork, potato pancakes and beer stands, but also several healthy vegetarian options, such as beetroot and onion burgers and freshly squeezed juice.

My favourite performance was that of Irena and Vojtech Havel in the synagogue. They play primarily stringed instruments, particularly the cello and violin, but were accompanied on this occasion by a young man on the clarinet. Their music is difficult to define, but haunting, atmospheric and ethereal are descriptions that would all apply. The almost ghostly music had the audience entranced, and the centuries-old liturgical texts of the synagogue walls and ceiling arches were the perfect backdrop.

The oldest written reference to Jewish settlement in Boskovice is from 1343, but it’s presumed that a strong community was not established there until 1454, when Moravian royal cities banished their Jewish populations, who then sought refuge in the towns of the more tolerant landowning nobles. A fully fledged Jewish quarter existed in Boskovice from the early 1500s, but the inhabitants were severely limited in their rights and paid higher taxes than Christian residents. Restrictions on employment meant that most Jews became craftsmen such as potters, tailors, goldsmiths, bakers, or leatherworkers; or dealt in financial matters such as money-lending.

The Jewish quarter in Boskovice exhibits the typical characteristics of Jewish settlements in Moravia. It lies between the landowning noble’s palace and the market square of the Christian town, and the houses and public buildings are built closely together in crooked laneways according to no overall plan. The limited space available meant that both fire and disease spread more quickly than in the Christian part of town. When the crowded Jewish quarter suffered a far higher proportion of deaths in the 1715-1716 plague epidemic than did the Christian town, the authorities (with somewhat questionable logic) decided to contain the quarter behind gates and walls. The worst of the frequent fires occurred in 1823, when almost all of the buildings were seriously damaged or completely destroyed.

When the revolutionary year of 1848 brought a relaxation from the restrictive conditions of the middle ages, the Jewish quarter flourished, and by the year 1857 the population had reached 1810, which was about a third of Boskovice’s population at the time. The Jewish town became independent politically and had its own mayor, police and fire brigade. Later in the 19th century the population began to decline as many of the Jewish families used their new freedom to migrate to larger cities in search of better economic conditions. In 1919, the political independence of the Jewish quarter was dissolved and it was integrated with the rest of the town.

By the time of the 1939 invasion, the Jewish population of Boskovice was 458. Only 14 of these were to survive the wartime deportations.

The Jewish quarter today is part of the urban preservation zone and more than 20 buildings are considered to be of special historical importance. These include the meat shops on U Vážné studny square, the schoolhouse on Bílkova Ul. and the ritual bathhouse at 8 U Koupadel. The oldest medieval part of the quarter is the central area around U Vážné studny, U Koupadel and Traplova streets. The gateway at the eastern end of Plaèkova Ul. is the last remaining piece of the wall that separated the Jewish quarter from the rest of the town. The most important of the buildings are marked with explanatory plaques, some with maps and historical photos. The short descriptions are in Czech only, but the maps and diagrams are informative and an English translation is available from tourist information.

The Boskovice castle is one of the most extensive castle ruins in the country and it’s hilltop location above Boskovice on one side and Pilské valley on the other makes it also one of the most beautifully set. The first written mention of the castle is from the year 1312, and for the following six centuries of its useful life it was almost continually being rebuilt and extended in architectural styles ranging from the original Gothic to Renaissance and baroque.

The first part of the castle that you will see is the Renaissance entry-gate. The most recent part of the castle (late 17th-century), it is also the most thoroughly restored and now houses the ticket office, refreshment kiosk and a small museum. The museum includes copies of the carved gravestones of the Zastrižl noble family and a copy of the famous Boskovice bible, which was one of the first to be translated into Czech. Perhaps the most interesting display in the museum however is the scale model of the castle as it would have appeared at the peak of its useful life in the early 1700s.

Once through the entry gate, you’ll walk up a long incline to the inner core of the castle, the Gothic palace building. The remnants of the palace walls gracefully reach to the third of the palace’s original four stories and hold brick and stone window frames, fireplaces, chimneys and an ingenious rubbish chute. The underground rooms of the palace are also accessible. Most are empty stone cellars, but one contains portions of sculpted stone portals and gravestones, and the water-cleaning room shows the system used for filtering rainwater. Visitors to the castle are free to explore the ruins at their leisure and the dangerous sections all have wooden guard-rails erected. The views over the town and the forest are exceptional, and it’s difficult to imagine a prettier place for a picnic than one of the grassed upper courtyards.

The large courtyard immediately below the inner palace also holds several exhibits of interest to visitors. The mock execution stage has a working rack, gallows and noose, and several nasty looking contraptions designed to press iron spikes into human flesh. The well and its huge buckets and chains are also preserved, and pheasants, goats and guard dogs are housed in the stables that run along the inside of the defensive wall.

There are no other buildings close to the castle, and it’s easy to imagine yourself armed with musket or bow high in one of the towers on the lookout across your master’s lands. It’s certainly one of the most atmospheric and interesting ruined castles in the country, yet remains largely unknown to foreign tourists.

The Boskovice Jewish cemetery/Židovský Hřbitov contains some 2500 graves dating from the mid 1600’s and is situated in the typical position on a hill above the town, far enough away so as not to be in the plain sight of citizens going about their everyday business. The cemetery measures 14258 square metres and is said to be the third-largest in the Czech Republic after those in Prostějov and Frýdek-Místek. (Other large Jewish cemeteries are in Olomouc, Brno, Mikulov and Trebíc).

Even though the Boskovice Jewish cemetery dates only from the 17th century, there was a Jewish community in Boskovice as early as the 14th century. The location of the previous cemetery is not known for certain, but is believed to have been in the same area, some 200m closer to the town. The current cemetery is believed to have been founded when the expanding residential Jewish quarter encroached upon the area of the original one.

Most of the legibly marked graves in the cemetery date from the 18th century. Many of the older gravestones have suffered extensive damage due to the effects of the weather and some have almost disintegrated completely. The graves are arranged in orderly rows, although the rampant ivy and haphazard collection of trees that grew spontaneously in the years after World War Two will try to convince you otherwise. Small pathside stones with Hebrew and Arabic numerals are the markers for individual sections of the cemetery.

The cemetery shows a wide variation in the status of the members of the Jewish community. The graves of the wealthier or more respected citizens are towards the front of the cemetery and many of the gravestones show a high degree of craftsmanship. The most valuable historically are those of the Baroque South-Moravian or Mikulov type, from the middle of the eighteenth century. The style combines the usual elements of headstone design with those of the regional folk art. Typically the main panel of text will be bordered by pilasters at each side and an ornamental scroll at the top. The Mikulov type also incorporates floral and plant motifs into the decorative border area and tends to be of a more ornate overall shape. The gravestones of the less wealthy citizens towards the rear of the cemetery are much plainer, the simplest ones consisting of a rectangular tablet topped by a semicircle.

Most of the more recent (from the mid-19th century) graves are larger, and some are carved from white marble. Unlike the older Hebrew gravestones, the inscriptions are often in German and there are even several in Czech (The German language was not allowed to be used on public memorials after 1945). The last burial took place here in 1949.

The original Boskovice Synagogue Major was a simple rectangular hall with a high vaulted brick ceiling supported by massive stone walls. At the western end of hall inside the main doors was a small entrance hall, and above it the women’s gallery, which at the time had its own separate entrance via a wooden staircase to the lane behind the synagogue. The basic construction of the Synagogue dates from 1639, and was undertaken by Italian builders who were in Boskovice in the service of the noble land-owning family of the time.

Frescoes covered the vaults and walls of the main hall, women’s and children’s galleries and combined the purely decorative elements of folk art with traditional Jewish symbols such as torah crowns, seven-armed candelabra and tables laid with bread. The text portions of the decorations consisted of prayers, blessings and basic passages from the Jewish mass. The liturgical texts are thought to have served as a kind of prayer book for the less wealthy citizens, allowing everybody present to participate in the ceremony.

With the late 17th-century growth in the Jewish population of Boskovice, the capacity of the original synagogue was insufficient and work began on an extension to the rear (northern side) of the building. The new hall was the full width and around half the depth of the original and was built on the narrow laneway to which the women’s staircase previously exited. The staircase was moved inside and the extension was connected to the main hall by a nine metre high archway. An arched doorway connected the new raised women’s gallery to the old and arched windows provided a view of the main hall.

The newly combined women’s gallery was decorated in the years 1704-05 by craftsmen from Krakow, and the texts and decorations of the main hall were repainted by 1722. Despite several fires in the 18th century, and the damage and neglect suffered during and after World War II, the building and much of the decorative paintwork on the upper walls and roof arches were able to be restored between 1989 and 2002, and now make up the oldest and most valuable example of synagogue decorative art in the Czech lands. (Further valuable examples can be seen in the Třebíč (rear) synagogue, and at Dolni Kounice and Holešov.)

The synagogue is traditionally furnished with an ark (for the storage of the torah) on the eastern wall (directly opposite the entrance gallery) and a raised oratory platform in the centre of the hall. The entry hall now holds an information desk where you can buy your 40Kc full-price or 20Kc reduced entry ticket. The synagogue is open to the public 7 days a week from May through September, and in April and October only on weekends. The main season weekday hours are from 9am until 5pm and the weekend hours are from 1pm until 5pm.

The Boskovice chateau building was originally a Dominican monastery dating from the year 1682. When the monks had to leave after the 1784 reforms of Emperor Josef II, the chateau was sold to the noble landowning family, the Dietrichsteins.

As their hilltop castle became increasingly obsolete, the Dietrichsteins had the monastery rebuilt as an Empire style chateau (in the years 1819-1826). The monumental three-storey, four-winged chateau came into the ownership of the Mensdorff-Pouilly family in 1856, but in 1948, the building was nationalized by the new communist government and put to use as a school and museum.

The chateau was returned to the Mensdorff-Pouillys in the restitution of the early 1990s, and remains open as a museum demonstrating the life and customs of the ruling noble landowners of centuries past.

The ticket office is on the ground floor and the museum takes up the entire four wings of the first floor. At the beginning of the guided tour you’ll be supplied with the old-fashioned over-slippers that were once almost mandatory in museums to preserve both peace and parquetry.

One of the first rooms visited by the tour is the library; three of its four walls are completely covered with shelves of antique leather-bound books as far as the ten-foot ceiling, and the centre of the room is taken up by two colossal globes representing the earthly and heavenly spheres. Further rooms showcase such things of interest as some of the earliest wallpapers in the land, reconstructions of opulent baroque furniture, portraits of the many members of the noble families and their forefathers’ victories in various battles, and historic costumes in the ladies and gentlemen’s dressing rooms. The most notable of the historic artifacts are the oldest globe (of the world) in Moravia, and a primitive but clever projector for puppet theatre which was a gift from Queen Victoria of England.

The real highlight of the tour though, is a reenactment of a duel between a man and a woman in the main dining room. Both actors are dressed in period costume and use apparently live blades to settle their differences. The duel lasts at least five minutes including the verbal hostilities and challenge at the beginning and several sharp-tongued interludes during pauses of the sword play. This was also the part of the tour that I found the chateau’s No Photography policy most regrettable.

When the actors disappear to their dressing room, it’s on to see one of Europe’s first reticulated heating systems, some amazingly intricate parquetry flooring, music room with grand piano and harp, and children’s room with monstrous teddy bears.

Except on Mondays, the chateau is open to visitors May through September from 9am to 5pm. A full-price ticket is 60Kc, reduced is 35kc, and the family ticket is 155Kc.