The City
From the station a steady stream of people plough up and down Masarykova , the main shopping route. Don't let that stop you from looking up at the five-storey mansions, some laden with a fantastic mantle of decoration. To the left as you head up Masarykova is Zelny trh , a low-key vegetable market on a sloping cobbled square, with a huge fountain by Fischer von Erlach in its centre. At the top of the square, the plain mass of the Dietrichstein Palace contains the Moravian Museum (Moravske zemske muzeum; Tues-Sat 9am-6pm), a worthy collection of ancient and medieval artefacts. Much more interesting, if only for their macabre value, is the Capuchin Crypt (Kapucinska hrobka; Tues-Sat 9am-noon & 2-4.30pm, Sun 11-11.45am & 2-4.30pm) to the far south of the square, a gruesome collection of dead monks and top nobs mummified in the crypt of the Capuchin church. Clearly visible from Zelny trh is the Old Town Hall (Stara radnice; daily 7am-8pm). Anton Pilgram's Gothic doorway is its best feature, the thistly pinnacle above the statue of Justice symbolically twisted - Pilgram's revenge on the town aldermen who short-changed him for his work. Inside, the courtyards and passageways are jam-packed with tour groups, most of them here to see the so-called Brno dragon (actually a stuffed crocodile) and the Brno Wheel, made in 1636 by a cartwright from nearby Lednice. If you're still hazy on the geography of the town, the tower is worth a climb for the panorama across the red-tiled rooftops. Southwest of the square, the Petrov hill - on which the Cathedral of St Peter and Paul stands - is one of the best places to escape to from the choked streets below. The cathedral's needle-sharp Gothic spires dominate the skyline for miles around, but close up, the crude nineteenth-century rebuilding has made it a lukewarm affair. Back down on Masarykova, follow the flow north and you'll end up at namesti Svobody - far short of magnificent but nonetheless the place where most of Brno come to shop. On the northeast corner of the square, the Ethnographical Museum (Tues-Sun 9am-5pm) houses a large collection of Moravian stuff, as well as occasionally hosting exhibitions on other countries. One of Brno's finest late nineteenth-century buildings is the Mahen Theatre , to the east of the square down Koblizna. This confident building was the first theatre in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to be fitted with electric lightbulbs. The squat Dum umeni is an ugly companion, but it contains one of Brno's most innovative art galleries and performance venues. A little further up Rooseveltova, the grey and unappealing Janacek Theatre was built in the 1960s as the country's largest opera house. Across the park and a short way up Kounicova on the corner with Smetanova, there's a modest museum (Mon-Fri 8am-noon & 1-4pm) celebrating the life and music of Leos Janacek , where you can sit back and relax to his compositions. He moved to Brno at the age of eleven and spent most of his life here, founding the Brno Conservatoire in 1882. On the western edge of the city centre, the UPM on Husova (Tues-Sun 10am-6pm) contains one of the country's best collections of modern applied art, displaying everything from avant-garde photomontages to swirling Art Nouveau vases; it also has excellent temporary shows. At the Prazak Palace (Tues-Sun 10am-6pm), a little further down the road, there's a very good cross-section of twentieth-century Czech art on permanent display. Skulking in the woods above the gallery is the barely visible Spilberk Castle and fortifications , one of the worst prisons in the Habsburg Empire, and later the Brno Gestapo jail; the dungeons (Tues-Sun 9am-5pm) are now open to the public. Further west still, where the River Svratka opens onto the plain (tram #1 or #18 from the station), is the Vystaviste exhibition grounds . The main buildings were laid out in 1928 for the Exhibition of Contemporary Culture; most of the leading Czech architects of the day were involved. On the opposite side of town, modernist guru Mies van der Rohe built the Vila Tugendhat (Wed-Sun 10am-6pm) in the same functionalist style as the above-mentioned Vystaviste. The recently renovated house is at Cernopolni 45, off Merhautova, itself a continuation of M. Horakove; take tram #5, #9, #17 or #21 three stops east from Jostova, and then walk north three blocks up Cernopolni.
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