The historical city of the year 2017 is the South Bohemian Slavonice

Prague - The historic city of the year 2017 is the Renaissance town of Slavonice, known for its uniquely preserved historic center with burgher houses adorned with sgraffito façades. This year’s holder of the award for exemplary care of monuments and the use of state subsidies for their restoration was traditionally announced today at Prague Castle. The city receives a reward of one million crowns for further care of the monuments, which was accepted by the mayor of Slavonice, Hynek Blažek.

A total of 33 cities registered for the 24th annual competition. Slavonice, which has 59 immovable cultural monuments, advanced to today’s final as the winner in the South Bohemian Region. Due to its preserved historic core, Slavonice is sometimes nicknamed the "little Telč" or "pearl of Western Moravian Renaissance." Slavonice is the westernmost town in the historic territory of Moravia and, along with the nearby Dačice, one of the only two Moravian towns in the South Bohemian Region.

Unlike many other towns and municipalities participating in the competition, Slavonice has never been in the finals. Among the 14 regional winners, Brtnice, Vysoké Mýto, and the Prague 1 city district were also announced as finalists today; their representatives received a reward of 100,000 crowns, which is also awarded to all regional finalists.

Last year, thanks to grants from the Ministry of Culture amounting to nearly 2.5 million crowns, 11 monuments in Slavonice were restored, which is significantly more than all other regional winners. Of these, three were municipal monuments, and eight were private. The city contributed 143,000 crowns to the owners of the monuments for these repairs. The owners’ share, including cases where the owner of the monument is the city, was 830,000 crowns.

The largest contribution from the program, 640,000 crowns, last year went towards the restoration of the fresco decoration of the Evangelical prayer house, and 430,000 crowns from the program contributed to the restoration of a recently discovered sgraffito façade of one of the houses. Slavonice has been part of the urban monument reserve and zone regeneration program since 1993, when the program was established. The city estimates that it has invested over 70 million crowns into its monument zone without contributions and shares in the program since its inception.