9 WEEKS OF BAROQUE FESTIVAL

Week 5 | Kladruby / Stříbro area / Bezdružice (27.7. - 2.8. 2015)

27.7. 2015 Landscape Sheep Hill - Krasíkov
28.7. 2015 Village square and Chateau of Cebiv
29.7. 2015 Chateau Bezdružice  
30.7. 2015 The Town of Stříbro
31.7. 2015 Riding school Světce near Tachov  
1.8. 2015 Riding school Světce near Tachov /repeated performance/  
1.8. 2015 Chateau Svojšín
1.8. 2015 Kladruby Monastery  
2.8. 2015 Church in Úterý and landscape Vidžín
2.8. 2015 Church in Kladruby  

Through its character, the landscape is a continuation of the surroundings of Tachov. The crucial and driving force behind the events and developments in this region was the monastery in Kladruby, which this year celebrates 900 years of existence. The fact that the best artists and architects of the period were involved in the activities of the monastery only proves the breadth of the cultural knowledge which the monastery's abbots of that time possessed. In the Baroque period, this concerned two names essential to Czech Baroque art – Jan Santini Aichel and Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer.

Missing the convent church in Kladruby during your visit would be a big mistake. It was built by Jan Santini Aichel on the ruins of a Romanesque and Gothic church, in a style termed Baroque Gothic. The ingeniously used Gothic patterns have determined the signature appearance of one of the biggest convent churches in Bohemia, featuring a dome adorned with the Crown of Mary. This was a deliberate effort to bridge the evolution gap which the Hussite wars left in their wake, disrupting the monastery's calm growth. It was a gesture of rising after the downfall, still legible and still vivid enough to be followed.
The monastic builders operated across the entire estate of the monastery, leaving beautiful churches behind them in villages and towns such as Ostrov by Stříbro. Even the town of Stříbro itself has many a thing to offer. The local parish Church of All Saints, a stern building on the outside, with its medieval traces, has a rich interior decor of paintings by the Pilsen painter František Julius Lux.