Státní hrad a zámek Český Krumlov

I’m not sure if it was because this has been overhyped for me or if the tour that my school took me on wasn’t comprehensive, but I really wasn’t all that impressed with Cesky Krumlov. Hear me out. The castle grounds are beautiful. The garden is beautiful, the rotating audience was pretty cool (though we couldn’t get in, apparently you need tickets? we still saw it rotate though). We saw a nice view of Cesky Krumlov and it’s beautiful. BUT. Is it more beautiful than other places in the Czech Republic? Meeeh. That’s where it falls. I feel like there are so many other beautiful places – Karlovy Vary, Palava Biosphere, Mikulov, etc. that this castle really just paled in comparison to everything else that I’ve seen in the Czech Republic. I wouldn’t even rate it my favorite castle… I liked the Lednice State Château (I know, not a castle, but the architecture was cooler)
It does have two bear pits which was pretty cool, except for the bears are basically… dead… well they don’t move at all and it was a bit concerning. It was cool to see bears I guess, that was at least something new.
tldr; I think Cesky Krumlov is a bit overrated given all the other natural beauties in the Czech Republic

I’m gonna sound like a real snooty B here, but I didn’t find myself super impressed with the castles we saw on our multi-​country European adventure… I mean, none of the castles even had moats or drawbridges. WTF is that about? Isn’t that pretty much the first thing you learn in Cool Castle:101? Like, should it even still be called a castle if it doesn’t have those things?
If I had to pick one castle that stood out amongst the rest, it’d be this one for one reason: It has TWO bear pits. BEAR. PITS.
Basically, if you were hangin’ in the beautiful (and now UNESCO protected) city of Český Krumlov back in the day, and were actin’ a fool, you got thrown to the bear pits, and people would watch as your ass got eaten. WWGOTD (What Would Game Of Thrones Do)? Probably this.
As for the rest of the castle, it’s def more impressive from far away… but I guess that’s a pretty subjective statement so I’ll revise and say that the impressiveness of this castle decreases with the amount of fictional castles you’ve seen in movies and television. The more faux castles you’ve seen, the less the real-​deal castles are to impress. So basically, if you’ve watched HBO at all in the last 2 years, visiting might be more of a yawn than you anticipated… but you should still go because Český Krumlov was one of the coolest places we visited (that I never knew existed) and going through the castle walls and the grounds is free. They do offer guided tours twice a day, I believe, but not on Mondays (guess which day we were there?).
If you don’t take a tour you won’t learn much about the castle in terms of literature that you’d think they’d have. There’s basically a map and that’s it, so you kind of have to do some research beforehand if you want any background info, otherwise you’re just taking everything at face value.
As mentioned earlier, the bear pits were awesome, although we came during the cold, off-​season when the bears go back to the zoo and aren’t in their pits. Boo. Looking up from the bridges over the winding river in town to the castle built into the cliff was hella dope and looking out from the castle to the river, city below, and hills was a spectacular view… and the only place we saw a glimpse of the sun our entire trip.
The thing I didn’t realize about a lot of these castles is that what looks like incredible stone carvings and details from far away were, most of the time, just paint on the stone made to look like carvings and such. A member of my group explained why they did this, but of course I forgot. Regardless, the painting on the cement only looks cool from far away. Up close, you just kind of feel like you’re on a set or at Disney World. It’s just SO faux that it looks like the same kind of painted artwork you’d find in a little girl’s princess-​themed bedroom. It takes away from the real history behind it, I think, and I much preferred the non-​painted, cliff-​side exterior of the castle.
The castle itself looks a bit more expansive than it actually was, but we found the back route (that goes through the not-​so-​scenic employee parking and annex lots) to the backside of the castle (which was under some mighty ugly, loud, toxic-​ly stinky construction) to see the outside of the dungeon, that looked pretty desolate from the outside, so I can imagine it being the second least desirable place to reside in the castle (next to the bear pits, duh).
The garden, castle hedges, and grounds were pretty cool and will take you about 40 minutes to walk if you don’t do any stopping or photo-​taking. Again, we went in the off season so nothing besides the monster-​hedges and pseudo labyrinth were in bloom, but it was still scenic and I’m sure mighty gorgeous during the warmer months. Totally worth going to for the castle grounds and sites up into and from the castle. If you can afford to go during a spring or summer month, def do that, it’s probably a 5-​star-​worthy castle in the peak season. Otherwise you’ll spend a decent portion of your traveling trying to imagine how nice stuff would look and feel if not everything was closed and you weren’t freezing your ass off and it weren’t always grey with everything dead around you… plus, BEAR PITS!