The Most Beautiful Buildings in the Czech Republic
8 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful buildings in the Czech Republic are Clementinum, Český Krumlov Castle and Kroměříž Castle. The list covers 8 buildings. Last updated 14 October 2026.
The Czech lands came through the twentieth century with an extraordinary amount of historic architecture intact, from Gothic and Renaissance towns to the Baroque of the Counter-Reformation, when Jesuits and monastic orders built colleges, libraries and churches of great richness. The country was also a centre of interwar modernism and, later, of bold experiments in concrete and steel. Few countries of its size offer such a range in so small an area.
In Prague, the Clementinum, a former Jesuit college, holds a Baroque library hall with painted ceilings and globes, while the Strahov Monastery Library has two great halls, Theological and Philosophical, lined with carved and gilded bookcases. The Estates Theatre, opened in 1783, is where Mozart conducted the premiere of Don Giovanni. Český Krumlov Castle, rising above a bend of the Vltava, includes one of the best-preserved Baroque theatres in Europe, still with its original stage machinery.
Beyond the Baroque the range widens. Villa Tugendhat in Brno, designed by Mies van der Rohe and finished in 1930, is a landmark of modern living, with a wall of onyx and glass panes that sink into the floor. The Ještěd Tower near Liberec is a hyperboloid hotel and transmitter on a mountain summit. In a forest near Kuks, Braun's Bethlehem is a set of Baroque sculptures by Matthias Bernard Braun carved straight into natural sandstone boulders.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Clementinum | Library building | |
| 2 | Český Krumlov Castle | Castle | |
| 3 | Kroměříž Castle | Palace | ✓ |
| 4 | Villa Tugendhat | Manor house | |
| 5 | Estates Theatre | Opera house | |
| 6 | Strahov Monastery Library | Library building | |
| 7 | Ještěd Tower | Observation tower | |
| 8 | Braun's Bethlehem near Kuks | Sculpture garden |
01 Clementinum
Klementinum
Czech Republic · 0.5 km from Prague50.087° N 14.416° E
VitVit · CC BY-SA 4.0 The reason to come is the Baroque Library Hall, finished in 1722. It is a long, two-storey room of carved bookcases and gilded Corinthian columns, with a slender gallery running around the upper shelves and a painted ceiling by Jan Hiebl that pretends to open into a dome. The frescoes celebrate learning as a temple of wisdom, and down the middle of the floor stands a line of old terrestrial and celestial globes.
Did you know? Daily temperature readings taken three times a day since 1784 give Prague one of the longest continuous weather records in Central Europe.
02 Český Krumlov Castle
Český Krumlov
Czech Republic · 21.4 km from České Budějovice48.813° N 14.315° E
Image by Pixel-Sepp from Pixabay The theatre is what sets Krumlov apart from other great Central European residences. It was first built in wood in 1680–1682 under Johann Christian I of Eggenberg and refitted with new stage machinery in 1765–1766 under Joseph Adam of Schwarzenberg. It survives with its auditorium, deep stage and the original wooden machinery for fast scene changes, and it counts among the best-preserved Baroque theatres in the world.
Did you know? Covering more than six hectares, the complex was the third most visited castle in the Czech Republic in 2014.
03 Kroměříž Castle
Czech Republic · 20.3 km from Zlín49.300° N 17.393° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Pudelek (Marcin Szala) · CC BY-SA 4.0 The palace has a long history of destruction and rebuilding. A late-Gothic residence built around 1500 was sacked by the Swedish army in 1643 during the Thirty Years' War. From 1664 Bishop Karl of Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn had it rebuilt in Baroque style by the Italian architect Filiberto Lucchese and, after his death, by Giovanni Pietro Tencalla.
04 Villa Tugendhat
Vila Tugendhat
Czech Republic · 0.9 km from Brno49.207° N 16.616° E
Thomas Ledl · CC BY 4.0 The villa was commissioned by Fritz and Greta Tugendhat, members of a wealthy and influential Jewish family in Brno, and built by the firm of Artur and Moritz Eisler in about fourteen months from the summer of 1929. Mies used a steel frame that freed the interior from load-bearing walls, so that the main floor flows as one open space divided only by freestanding elements.
Did you know? A meticulous restoration from February 2010 to March 2012 cost about 150 million koruna, with Mies's grandson, architect Dirk Lohan, among its advisers.
05 Estates Theatre
Stavovské divadlo
Czech Republic · 0.1 km from Prague50.086° N 14.424° E
VitVit · CC BY-SA 4.0 The building was the project of Count Franz Anton Nostitz-Rieneck, an Enlightenment aristocrat who wanted his city to have a grand public stage. Designed by Anton Haffenecker in a restrained Neoclassical manner, it went up in less than two years and opened in 1783 with Lessing's tragedy Emilia Galotti. Over the portal runs the motto Patriae et Musis, "to the homeland and the Muses".
Did you know? On 20 January 1785 the theatre staged a Czech translation of a German comedy, considered the first professional performance in Czech in Prague.
06 Strahov Monastery Library
Strahovský klášter
Czech Republic · 2.4 km from Prague50.086° N 14.389° E
Barnos · CC BY-SA 4.0 The collection runs to more than 200,000 volumes, including over 3,000 manuscripts, and it is housed in two halls built a century apart. The Theological Hall, completed in 1679, is a long gallery whose vaulted ceiling was painted by Siard Nosecký, with wooden bookcases running along its walls.
Did you know? The Philosophical Hall is about 32 metres long, 10 wide and 14 high, and its shelves hold more than 60,000 volumes.
07 Ještěd Tower
Ještěd
Czech Republic · 10.1 km from Liberec50.733° N 14.985° E
Image by ivabalk from Pixabay It exists because of a fire. The older wooden mountain hotel on the summit burned down in January 1963, and its replacement was entrusted to Karel Hubáček, one of the founders of the Liberec architectural studio SIAL. Working with the structural engineer Zdeněk Patrman, he designed the tower between 1963 and 1966; construction took until 1973, and the building opened on 9 July that year.
Did you know? The laminate panels around the antennas are joined without any metal fittings, because metal would block the broadcast signals.
08 Braun's Bethlehem near Kuks
Betlém u Kuksu
Czech Republic · 21.5 km from Hradec Králové50.398° N 15.849° E
Dezidor · CC BY 3.0 The project belonged to Count Franz Anton von Sporck, the art-loving lord of Kuks, who bought the forest in February 1717 and turned it into a landscape for religious contemplation. From 1718 he founded seven hermitages in the wood, dedicated to saints including Anthony, Paul, Francis, Jerome, Hubert, Giles and Bruno, and settled hermits there.
Did you know? The Garín statue and its cave belong to the village of Hřibojedy, and in 2021 the state proposed buying them to unite the whole ensemble under one owner.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful buildings in the Czech Republic?
- On our list, Clementinum ranks first, followed by Český Krumlov Castle and Kroměříž Castle.
- Where did Don Giovanni premiere?
- Mozart's Don Giovanni premiered at the Estates Theatre in Prague on 29 October 1787, with Mozart himself conducting. The theatre still stands and stages opera today.
- Why is Villa Tugendhat famous?
- Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the Tugendhat family in Brno, it was one of the first homes built with an open plan on a steel frame. Its onyx wall and large windows that lower into the floor make it a key work of modern architecture, and it is a World Heritage Site.
- What is Braun's Bethlehem?
- It is a group of Baroque sculptures carved in the early 18th century by Matthias Bernard Braun into sandstone outcrops in a forest near Kuks. It was made for Count Franz Anton von Sporck, who also built the nearby Kuks hospital.
- How many buildings are on this list in the Czech Republic?
- The list covers 8 buildings.