Čáslav

Čáslav stands beside the Brslenka stream in the central Bohemian plain. Its predecessor was the fortified settlement of Hrádek, founded in the ninth century and later a Přemyslid administrative centre. Around 1250 King Ottokar II founded a royal town beside it, laid out around a broad square. A Jewish community was established by the fourteenth century, though its members were expelled in the next century.

In 1421 the Bohemian parliament met at Čáslav and elected a new Hussite government. Great fires damaged the town in 1452 and 1522, and Swedish troops devastated and burned it in 1639 and 1642 during the Thirty Years' War. Čáslav recovered from these disasters and became the administrative centre of a region in 1715, more than a century after the devastating fires.