2 Best Sights in Moravia, Czech Republic

Olomouc's central square is marked by the bright, spire-bedecked Renaissance Town Hall with its 220-foot tower. The tower was constructed in the late 14th century. The modern socialist-realist mosaic decorations of the current clock on the face of the tower date to 1955. It replaced an astronomical clock built in 1422 that once rivaled the one in Prague. It was mostly destroyed by an artillery shell on the last two days of World War II. Be sure to look inside the Town Hall at the beautiful stairway. You can also visit a large Gothic banquet room in the main building, with scenes from the city's history, and a late-Gothic chapel. The Town Hall was renovated in late 2019 and early 2020, and the wooden interior of the tower was completely rebuilt. Tours of the tower are given several times daily; tours of the rest of the building are by appointment. An audio guide to the city can be borrowed from the information center in the Town Hall.

Just inside the door of the oldest secular building in Brno, dating to the 13th century, are the remains of two famous Brno legends, the Brno Dragon and the wagon wheel. The dragon—actually an alligator—apparently turned up at the town walls one day in the 17th century and began eating children and livestock. As the story goes, a gatekeeper came up with the idea of stuffing a freshly slaughtered goat with limestone. The dragon devoured the goat, swallowing the limestone as well, and when it drank at a nearby river, the water mixed with the limestone and burst the dragon's stomach (the scars on the preserved dragon's stomach are still clearly visible). The story of the wagon wheel, on the other hand, concerns a bet placed some 400 years ago that a young wheelwright, JiřÌ Birek, couldn't chop down a tree, form the wood into a wheel, and roll it from his home at Lednice (53 km [33 miles] away) to the town walls of Brno—all between sunup and sundown. The wheel stands as a lasting tribute to his achievement. (The townspeople, however, became convinced that JiřÌ had enlisted the help of the devil to win the bet, so they stopped frequenting his workshop; poor JiřÌ died penniless.)

No longer the seat of the town government, the Old Town Hall holds exhibitions and performances and the town's tourist information office. To find out what's on, ask in the information center just inside Pilgram's portal. The view from the top of the tower is one of the best in Brno, but the climb (five flights) is strenuous.