Pelhrimov
Lying in the hills on the southwest reaches of the Czech-Moravian
Highlands along the Bela River, the old walled town of Pelhrimov is
today a small regional center of less than 20,000. But the town's history
goes back to the mid-12th century, when Prince Vladislav II gave the
area to bishops from Prague. The original settlement in the area was
on the site of nearby Stary (Old) Pelhrimov, but the name was transferred
to the area around the St. Vitus Church by Bishop Pelegrin in 1250, but
it was burned down by Vitek of Hluboka in 1289. Much of the town that was
re-built afterward still stands in the center, surrounded by a circular
wall with two towered gates (Rynarecka and Jihlavska).
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Zdar nad Sazavou
Zdar nad Sazavou, a town of 25,000, lies in the Sazava River valley in
the middle of the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands, in a region known as the
Zdarske vrchy (Zdar Heights). The town was founded in the middle of the
13th century, as Zdar (Czech for 'a clearing burnt out of the forest')
by Pribyslav of Krizanov, which coincided with the establishment of a
Cistercian monastery by Bocek of Obrany. The defining moment of the
monastery's and town's architecture came under the abbot Vaclav Vejmluva,
during the period of Czech Counter-Reformation in the 18th century,
when the talented Giovanni Santini (also referred to as Jan Blazej Santini
Aichel) was given the task of large-scale reconstruction of the monastery
and other church buildings in the area. He combined the previously existing
Gothic forms with Baroque ones and a special flair all his own. He worked
in the area for twenty years, and the majority of his completed works, over
one hundred, are in the Zdar region.
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