"Holidays in Telc is not only a festival, it is a different life style." This is what makes this event so unique and exceptional.
"Holidays in Telc" is a summer 14-day music festival and presentation of music groups supplemented with theater and movie performances. Strong evidence of growing popularity is the fact that the festival enters its 28th year of existence and is attended by approximately 20.000 visitors every year. The festival is organized by the 'Prazdniny v Telci' private agency together with the city Telc and the Telc Castle.
Most of activities take place in the attractive environment of the City Square and the courtyard of the chateau. Associated activities and performances have a scene laid at the Chateau Park or places near by. There are also art exhibitions that regularly take place on the old Jewish cemetery.
The evening concerts are preceded by presentation of new upcoming music groups on the City Square and are followed by nocturne in the relaxed atmosphere of the Music School Hall.
The festival regularly presents the very best of Czech folk scene (Plíhal, Žalman a spol., Druhá tráva, Samson, Redl, Nezmaři, Javory, Hradišťan, Jan Hrubý...). It is not unusual to find the celebrities of other fields (Hana Hegerová, Boleslav Polívka, Divadlo Sklep, Spirituál kvintet, Jaroslav Svěcený, Štěpán Rak) or foreign guests (American banjo player Tony Triska, Italian guitarist Beppe Gambetta, French Luise Capart or Miquel Montanaro, Irish bagpiper Davy Spillane, Glen Hansard...).
The agency 'Prazdniny v Telci' has produced several CDs with original records and multimedial applications containing plenty of photos and many videorecords from the festival. The agency regularly cooperates with Czech TV and many of the events and concerts are also directly broadcasted from this web-site.
Those who are fully saturated by the music and other festivities can relax while hiking through the wonderful landscape which surrounds Telc. The city was built on a cross section of important trade routes in 13th century. A Renaissance chateau and a collection of Renaissance and Baroque houses stand out in this city of European importance. In 1992 the historical part of Telc was added to the list of world culture heritage UNESCO.

Accommodation

There are many options for accommodation in Telc during the festival. Visitors can choose from many very nice and clean hotels located closer or further from the city center. As a budged alternative, the sport hall of the gymnasium is available to those with sleeping bags. Also, there are two campgrounds with tent spaces available during the festival.

Getting There

City Telc is well accessible by buses from Prague (bus station Florenc), Brno (Zvonarka), Jihlava, Ceske Budejovice, Jindrichuv Hradec or by train.

Milan Kolář
english translation by Michal Nekvasil

"Holidays in Telč - it is not only a festival, it is a way of life." What kind of life? A tasteful mixture of mutual tolerance, cordial friendship, openness, happiness and love. It seems that all the nice people from the planet Earth gather for two weeks in this small renaissance city of Telč. Why? Nobody really knows. But they come back every year. Started more than 20 years ago with folk and country music only, the festival covers nowadays much more genres - from folklore to world music. Main concert takes place in the courtyard of the beautiful chateau. Other concerts, theatre and other performances can be attended throughout the whole day all around the city. Last concerts finish around midnight. Don't you have enough yet? No problem - you can join one of the little groups playing guitar and singing, under the arcades of the city square, in a bar, or, as the best option - around a little fire. That is what Czechs love to do - sitting around the fire, watching stars and singing songs they have never been learnt. How comes that they all know them? Nobody really knows. But they usually do it until sunrise. And the city itself? UNESCO protected romantical city of Telč is more than 900 years old. You can find it south east from Prague, the drive takes about three hours. When arriving at the city square, your first feeling might be - "this can not be real, it must be just a backcloth for a movie." The city centre is surrounded by lakes, where you can rent a boat and enjoy perhaps the most beautiful view on the city. Afterwards you may take a steam train to another lovely city of Slavonice or explore the wonderful surrounding landscape on your bike. Think twice before coming. Telč, especially in the first half of August, is an extremely dangerous place. If you come once, you can hardly resist coming again and again. Why? You would hardly know. More about the city of Telč: http://www.telc-etc.cz

Michal Nekvasil