Holašovice is a village in southern Bohemia in the district of České Budějovice, 16 km west of České Budějovice and is part of the village of Jankov. The local unique set of buildings in the style of the so-called peasant baroque from the seventies of the 19th century forms a unique whole, which has been a village monument reserve since 1995 and was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1998. In 2011, 147 permanent residents lived here.
The village, planned around a rectangular square,
perhaps sometime around the middle of the 13th century, dates back
to 1292, when Holašovice received it from King Wenceslas II. the
Cistercian monastery in Vyšší Brod as compensation for other
property, returned to the heirs of the knight Svatomír of Němčice.
Holašovice remained in the possession of the monastery for the next
five and a half centuries, until the end of feudalism. During the
plague epidemic in the years 1520 to 1521, the surroundings of
Holašovice were severely affected, the village itself was
depopulated and the Vyšší Brod nobility had to repopulate it. If in
the land register written around 1510 the names of the inhabitants
of Holašovice were still mostly Czech, in another land register from
the end of the 1920s completely different German inhabitants are
already named. The village then numbered 17 homesteads. After the
Thirty Years' War, according to the census of subjects according to
the faith, made in 1651, there were 14 inhabited homesteads with 52
inhabitants (excluding children under 10 years of age) in
Holašovice.
After the abolition of serfdom, the village
belonged to the village of Záboří from 1850 until 1964, with the
exception of a brief independence in 1951 together with the
settlement of Lipanovice. With effect from 14 June 1964, Holašovice
forms part of the municipality of Jankov. From the national point of
view, Holašovice used to be German until the beginning of the 20th
century: in the 1910 census, 100% of the local population gave
German at the census; In 1925, a Czech school was established here,
which functioned until 1965. From 1938 to 1945, the village of
Záboří (including Holašovice) was annexed to the Empire within the
breakaway border, and after the end of World War II expulsion of the
majority of the German population.
UNESCO monument
In the strong global competition, the success
of the nomination was significantly supported by the fact that
Holašovice is a living and unpreserved community. A small village
with a total population of about 140 inhabitants is mainly used for
permanent housing, most of the buildings are privately owned. It is
not located directly on the main roads and routes, which is an
advantage for maintaining a quiet environment and this position also
owes its unique preservation.
Farmsteads of the peasant
baroque
The village consists of 23 listed exhibition homesteads
with a total of 120 buildings, which form a comprehensive monument
complex, including barns, barns, barns, exchanges, granaries, gates
and various fences. The homesteads are spread around the perimeter
of a large rectangular square measuring approximately 210 × 70
meters.
There is an almost 100% preserved system of sorting
individual homesteads with gabled facades of residential houses and
granaries, connected by enclosing walls with gates and arched
entrances to the square. The arrangement together with the preserved
stucco decor of the so-called folk or rural baroque on most of the
facade gives the whole settlement a unique atmosphere and
expression. It introduces the visitor to the environment of a
village mansion, as it was shaped by a complex architectural and
artistic development in the second half of the 19th century.
Other constructions
There are several other buildings around the
large rectangular square that are not registered as immovable
cultural monuments, such as the former municipal school, which now
serves as an information center. Outside the border of the monument
reserve lies a small center of agricultural production, part of the
area is rented by a private production of wood fuel. Newer buildings
from the 20th century are oriented on the northeastern edge of the
village outside the historic center.
In a meadow above the
southeastern edge of the village, a local citizen, Václav Jílek,
built a modern kromlech called the Holašovice Circle (a stone circle
with a diameter of 30 m out of 25 boulders of various shapes and
sizes). In 2011, he built a dolmen near three four-meter and
eight-ton boulders near it, on which a flat stone lies like a roof.
The boulders are granite and come from the quarry in Blatná. The
ceremonial opening of the dolmen took place on June 25, 2011 and a
flat stone forming the roof was placed next to it.