Karlstejn Castle

This area offers some great hiking opportunities in the surrounding bohemian karst forest.
We took the train from Prague central station to Karlstejn, the journey takes about 40 minutes. From the station it is a two kilometer climb up to the castle through a wide range of tourist oriented facilities. If you don't want to walk you could go by horse and carriage.

You need to take a tour to go into the castle we took the basic 50 minutes tour, for the longer tours you need to book in advance. The castle was built by Charles IV, the holy roman emperor who put Prague on the map. Charles was an interesting man he was educated in France, had four wives and was considered to be extraordinarily hygienic as he washed four times a month.

Karlstejn is the most important Czech castle and one of the symbols of the Kingdom of Bohemia. It's a Gothic castle built in 1348 by Charles IV to guard the imperial coronation jewels of the Kingdom of Bohemia and valuable relics. There are different ways of how to get to it from the parking lot. You can choose to share a van, a car or riding horses, but be warned that you have to climb 2km. When you walk down you can use a very beautiful path full of little shops.

Karstejn Castle is beautiful and has a 78 meter deep well. The bottom is lit, and you can throw some water in to see how long it takes to make contact down there.