Jewels of Bohemia Day 9

Wednesday, Sept. 3

After breakfast, we began our journey to Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. En route, we stopped for a visit to Trebic, an ancient Moravian city that is home to one of Europe’s best preserved Jewish ghettos—a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Jewish and Christian cultures co-existed here from the Middle Ages up to the 20th century, and our stroll took us to the ancient Jewish Synagogue.  Services were held in the synagogue until World War I, after which it fell into disuse and disrepair. It was a ruined shell when restoration work began in the early 1990s.

The structure has a barrel vaulted interior, heavy, partially buttressed walls, and arched windows. Walls and ceiling are covered with colorful paintings including Hebrew texts (some of them fragments), floral motifs (including a garland of flowers surrounding the small round window above the Aron niche), and painted lions on one of the doorways.   Behind the synagogue was the store and the Rabbi's home furnished as it might have been when the synagogue was in use.  We later purchased pastries at a local bakery.  

All Jewish inhabitants of Trebic were deported in WWII; nobody returned. 

 

 

 

 

The bakery run by special needs adults.

 

Later, we enjoyed lunch at a local restaurant in Lednice. Over the centuries, the region surrounding Lednice (and its twin town of Valtice) has been carefully landscaped with a series of woodlands, lakes, streams, gardens, and tree-lined chateaux—all of which have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We explored Lednice (Liechtenstein) Castle, an immense structure built in the Neo-Gothic style and then we got to wander among the tropical plants in the Castle's original iron-framed greenhouse.  

The palace of Lednice began its life as a Renaissance villa; in the 17th century it became a summer residence of the ruling Princes of Liechtenstein. The estate house proclaimed rural luxury on the grandest scale. In 1846–58 it was extensively rebuilt in a Neo-Gothic style .

It's hard to believe that this was just a summer mansion. Aristocracy used  this monstrous fairy-taleish building just as a cottage. They came here in early spring , but for winter they returned to central site in Valtice.

Lednice greenhouse is a technical landmark. It was built in 1843-1845, when England gave the lead to everything. That is where the idea of cast-iron framework, carrying light glass sheets, came from. The frame of the greenhouse is supported by cast-iron bamboo-shaped pillars, edged with superficial decorative leafs. Glass flakes are bicolour so as to easily distinguish the original parts of building from those reconstructed. The manor greenhouse is 92 meters long, 13 meters wide and 10 meters high.