Transfer from Prague to Cesky Krumlov plus 4 hours waiting time and return transfer
Cesky Krumlov in a single day, without a coach group and without a train change in Ceske Budejovice. We collect you at your hotel in Prague, drive you to the edge of the old town, wait four hours while you walk the place properly, and bring you back to the same door in the evening.
190 €per car, round trip
- Pick-up at your hotel in Prague, at the time you choose
- Drive to Cesky Krumlov — about two and a half hours
- Four hours of waiting included, the driver stays with the car
- Return to the same hotel in Prague the same evening
The price is for the whole car, not per person — one passenger or four, it does not change. Fixed at booking: no meter, no luggage surcharge, no recalculation at the end of the day.
Starting in Prague
Prague is a city best taken slowly, which is precisely the argument for not spending a day of it on public transport. Cesky Krumlov is the most rewarding day trip in the country — a medieval town wrapped inside a bend of the Vltava, small enough to see in an afternoon and beautiful enough that people plan whole holidays around it.
prague
The catch is getting there. There is no direct train, the bus takes three hours each way and drops you at a station outside the centre, and organised coach tours give you a fixed two hours in town with forty strangers. A private car removes all three problems at once.
The road from Prague to Cesky Krumlov
The drive is about 175 kilometres and takes roughly two and a half hours. We leave Prague southwards on the D3 motorway towards Ceske Budejovice, running through the rolling farmland and fishpond country of South Bohemia — this is the region where carp for the Czech Christmas table has been farmed since the fifteenth century.
Past Ceske Budejovice, home of the original Budweiser brewery, the road narrows and follows the Vltava upstream into the foothills of the Sumava mountains. The last twenty minutes are genuinely pretty: forest, river, and then the castle tower appearing above the rooftops.
If you would like to stop on the way — at Hluboka Castle, the white neo-gothic pile that looks like Windsor, or at the brewery in Ceske Budejovice — tell the driver when you book. A short stop can usually be fitted in without changing the price.
krumlov
What to see in Cesky Krumlov
The old town is compact and closed to traffic, so four hours on foot is genuinely enough to see it rather than rush it.
The castle. The second-largest castle complex in the Czech Republic after Prague Castle — around forty buildings and palaces arranged across five courtyards and a terraced garden. It sits on a rock spur above the river, and much of it can be walked through for free; only the interiors need a ticket.
The round tower. The symbol of the town, renaissance-painted in the 1580s in ochre, green and red. The climb is short and the view from the top — the horseshoe bend of the Vltava with red roofs inside it — is the photograph everyone comes for.
The baroque theatre. One of only a handful of eighteenth-century theatres anywhere that still has its original stage machinery, painted sets and costumes intact. It is shown on a small guided tour with limited places, usually from May to October, and it is worth booking ahead if you want to see it.
The bears in the moat. Bears have been kept in the castle ditch since the sixteenth century. The Rosenberg family who built the place claimed kinship with the Italian house of Orsini, whose name means bear, and the tradition simply never stopped.
The Cloak Bridge and the old town. A tall multi-storey bridge on arches links the castle to the theatre and the gardens. Below it, the Latran quarter and the town square are a knot of narrow lanes, St Vitus Church, and the Egon Schiele Art Centrum — the painter’s mother came from Krumlov and he worked here in 1911.
A short history
The town grew up in the thirteenth century around a ford on the Vltava, and for three hundred years belonged to the Rosenbergs, the most powerful noble family in Bohemia. They turned a border fortress into a renaissance residence and ran a court here that rivalled Prague.
When the last Rosenberg died childless in 1611 the estate went to Emperor Rudolf II, then to the Eggenbergs, and in 1719 to the Schwarzenbergs, who held it until 1947. It was the Eggenbergs and Schwarzenbergs who added the baroque layer — the theatre, the gardens, the Cloak Bridge.
What saved Krumlov was, paradoxically, being forgotten. The railways passed it by, industry never arrived, and the old town was left largely untouched for two centuries. It was restored after 1989 and put on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1992.
Coming back to your hotel in Prague
Four hours after drop-off the driver is waiting where he left you. The return takes the same road and about the same time, so a morning departure from Prague has you back at your hotel in the early evening.
If you would rather stay longer, that is not a problem — each additional hour of waiting is agreed in advance and added to the fare, so you know the number before you travel rather than after.
What is included
A private car with an English-speaking driver, for your group only. Pick-up from any hotel or address in Prague. Fuel, motorway tolls and parking in Krumlov. Child seats on request at no charge. A fixed price agreed at booking.
Museum and castle tickets are not included. If the baroque theatre is on your list, book it yourself in advance — places on each tour are few.
Booking
Write to cz@cztransfer.com or message +420 773 477 799 (Viber, WhatsApp, Telegram) with your hotel, your date and the departure time you want. We confirm the car and the price the same day.
Going further afield? See our Prague to Dresden day trip with waiting, our day trips and excursions from Prague, and private transfers across the Czech Republic and Europe.
