I have been many times in Tøebíè, dominated by the big basilica of St. Procopius (13th century), constructed on a hill as the church of a benedictine convent reconstructed after the destruction in the actual Renaissance castle. The basilica is a large Romanesque and Gothic building, built in granite and rogh and irregular sandstones with triple choir, three naves, an elongated presbitery with an apse that has a beautiful window and a nice gallery, a porch with a beautiful portal, a crypt with rib vaults and a chapel with frescos. The Gothicizing Baroque front with plaster rendering reconstructed by František Maxmilián Kaňka is in the same style like the interior. The jewish quarter is situated between the river Jihlava and a hill and had only a separation until 1875, when the Jews moved out and the area remained in the hands of the poor. It has two beautiful main roads, on different levels, and small alleys. The small houses (Renaissance or Baroque but more frequently later), have often an alley going through them, a vaulted ground floor, one or two upper floors with wooden ceilings. They were organized in condominiums: there were several owners in one house and could change their part of the building; on the street level was often a shop or a workshop and the others were used for living and had few services. The houses were often linked so some of them have no entrances or have them on different levels. There are also two sinagogues (one is in baroque style), the town hall, the rabbi's house a school, the hospital, a poor people's home and a leather factory. On the hill is the vast jewish cemetery, divided in one part of the 15th and another of the 19th century, that contains about 4000 typical tombs with hebraic inscriptions and carvings and a ceremonial hall (1930).

I liked very much the basilica and the jewish quarter because of the beauty of the first and because I have never seen a jewish quarter as nice as this; however the state of preservation of the houses is often bad, because they are owned by poor people. It's worth to be visited if you are in Moravia (if you go there you can visit the basilica only with guided tours and you must leave the car out of the jewish quarter) and justifies the inscription also because the jewish quarter, apart from Israel, is the biggest in the world and because there aren't many monuments of this type on the WHL.

Photo: Tøebíè - Basilica of St. Procopius