About Chotěboř
Chotěboř is a typical Czech town of medium size, equipped with basic offices and institutions, schools, sports grounds and cultural facilities and its history dates back to the 12th century.
The first mention of Chotěboř in written sources goes back to the year 1265. Silver mines in the surroundings of Chotěboř made the Czech king, John of Luxemburg, to buy the settlement. In 1331, he granted Chotěboř a town status.
In 1421, a tragic event happened in Chotěboř – Catholic lords burnt about 300 captured Hussites to death in town barns. Chotěboř remained a royal town till the end of the 15th century when the powerful aristocratic family of the Trčkas of Lípa acquired the town.
In the 17th a 18th century, many noblemen owned the town. In 1701-1702, Count Vilém Leopold Kinský had an early Baroque chateau built in Chotěboř. The chateau with a chapel consecrated to the Holy Trinity is surrounded by an English park.
The most important owners of the chateau were the members of the Dobrzensky of Dobrzenice family who owned it from 1836 to its confiscation in 1948. In 1992, the chateau was returned to them.
The Town Museum of Chotěboř has its seat in the chateau. The museum offers to its visitors a permanent historical exhibition and various short-term historical, etnographical as well as art exhibitions.
Other important sights of Chotěboř are: the Church of St. James the Greater (originally Romanesque, later Gothic, at the end of the 19th century rebuilt in the Neo-Gothic style), the house No. 194 (built in a late Baroque style) in the town square, and the old town hall.
The cemetery Chapel of the Elevation of the Holy Rod as well as St. Anne´s Chapel at the outskirts of the town are also worth seeing. The most important native sons of Chotěboř are the writer, journalist, and humorist Ignát Herrmann and the modern painter Zdenek Rykr.
Chotěboř is also closely connected with Jindřich Prucha, the painter of the Iron Mountains, as well as with the humorist writer Jaroslav Hašek, the author of the Good Soldier Švejk, who just before the World War I wrote several of his short stories in the Panský dům restaurant in the Chotěboř square.
Chotěboř is located on the northern edge of the Vysočina region at an altitude of 515 m and thus becomes the southern gateway to the Železná hora National Geopark.
The town of Chotěboř, including the local parts of Bílek, Dobkov, Klouzova, Počátky, Příjemky, Rankov, Střížov and Svinný, has about nine thousand inhabitants. Since 2003, the town of Chotěboř has been an authorized municipality of III. degree, which includes a total of 31 municipalities.
The city lives a rich cultural and social life. Tourists have at their disposal two hotels, two boarding houses, private accommodation and cheaper accommodation in youth homes. Around the city there are excellent conditions for hiking and biking, there are numerous sports facilities in the city.
The whole area is interwoven with marked hiking trails and several local and long-distance cycling routes pass through it. In winter, there is a ski slope in Chotěboř with the possibility of artificial snow with a length of 300 m.