Less than 30 km south of Telc lies the little town of Slavonice. On the morning of Thursday 7 th October, we drove from Telc to Slavonice, stopping off to briefly explore the intervening town of Decice en-route. Slavonice has some of the best examples of buildings with sgraffito decoration in the whole of the Czech Republic. In the twentieth century, two further events had a dramatic effect on Slavonice.
At the end of the Second World War in , most of the minority German-speaking population of Czechoslovakia, the Sudeten Deutsche , were expelled. This included the majority of the population of Slavonice.
Fortunately, since the Velvet Revolution of , a considerable effort has been made to both restore and preserve it. We ate lunch here soon after our arrival and enjoyed the English version of the menu which has several humorous items on it and a total absence of Czenglish. The food was very good too!
Sgraffito decorated buildings in Slavonice. So we went in, climbed the stairs to the first floor office and enquired about their rooms. We were shown a very attractive room with simple kitchen facilities adjacent, all for a very reasonable price. I was also able to move the car from the main square and park it securely in the yard at the rear of the building.
And on the first floor, adjacent to our room, is a former Lutheran prayer room, with the walls decorated with sixteenth century frescoes, illustrating scenes from the Book of Revelation. They date from the time when there was a strong Protestant community in Slavonice before the re-imposition of Roman Catholicism at the end of the Thirty Years War. I was not allowed to take any photos of the frescoes but there are pictures of them on their website , together with some very interesting Czenglish descriptions!
