Holašovice is a village in South Bohemia, part of the municipality of Jankov. Its historic core is a protected village reserve and has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1998.[2][3] On the list it represents Czechia as one of a number of well-preserved villages.[3]
History
According to the village's official website, the development of the present settlement goes back to the middle of the 13th century. The regular layout suggests that the village was founded on a greenfield site, with no older settlement on the spot, as part of the colonisation of the South Bohemian borderland.[1] Settlement in the area is much older. About five kilometres from the village, by the Dehtář pond, a Neolithic settlement was found, and bronze objects from the Late Bronze Age found in the immediate vicinity are now held in the collections of the South Bohemian Museum in České Budějovice.[1]
The first written mention dates from 1292, from a charter of King Wenceslas II. The king then granted the request of the descendants of Slavomír of Němčice, who asked for the return of land held by the Vyšší Brod Monastery. As compensation the monastery received royal villages south-east of Netolice, among them Holašovice. They remained monastery property until 1848.[1] The Krumlov urbarium of 1510 lists the first names of Holašovice farmers and shows that the population was then predominantly Czech. This changed after the plague epidemic of 1520 to 1521.[1]
The settlement developed with exceptional stability: the number and layout of the farmsteads remained almost unchanged, and newer buildings and the agricultural complex lie outside the compact medieval core.[1]
Appearance and value
The farmsteads, grouped around a spacious rectangular green with a chapel of St. John of Nepomuk, form an ensemble which, according to the National Heritage Institute, documents the maturity of planned foundations in the period of high medieval colonisation.[3] The dwelling houses and granaries face the green mostly with their gables, and the yards are entered through masonry gateways. The buildings have the form of the 19th century, when the so-called peasant Baroque emerged, with façades decorated with fine stucco. Village builders drew inspiration from urban architecture there, above all from Baroque and Classicist elements.[3]
Heritage protection and UNESCO inscription
Until the early 1950s the farms were run individually, first by German long-established residents and, after the expulsion in 1946, briefly also by new Czech inhabitants. Collectivisation followed after 1948. According to the village website, Holašovice avoided changes almost completely, because the cooperative used selected barns and cowsheds without demolishing them, and new buildings were erected outside the historic core.[2]
Efforts at area-wide protection have been under way since about 1958, when Holašovice was entered in the Central List of Cultural Monuments after the Cultural Monuments Act came into force. In 1995 the Holašovice village heritage reserve was established by government decree, one of 60 settlement units with heritage protection. The inscription on the World Heritage List took place on 5 December 1998 in Kyoto, Japan.[2]
After the inscription a series of reconstructions followed. Roofs were repaired first, then the façades facing the green, where damaged plaster was restored and the farmsteads received limewash according to a colour survey carried out by the National Heritage Institute in České Budějovice. The green was also landscaped, and the fire-fighting reservoir was turned into a small pond on the green.[2] According to the village website, thanks to tourism, which previously hardly existed, Holašovice now receives more than 90,000 visitors a year.[2]