Horse breeding on the World Heritage List? I am not into horses and equestrian sports, and when I see the Fiakers at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, I doubt that the horses have much fun drawing the tourists through the city. It would be healthier for both if people would walk. So I was not very excited when Kladruby nad Labem was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2019. But in October 2021 I set out to complete the Czech Republic again and combined this with a revisit to Prague.

I arrived in Kladruby around noon on a weekday. A castle tour had just started, but I decided to wait another two hours for the guided tour to the stables. After all, it's about horses and I have already seen enough interiors of castles.
To fill the time, I hiked the circular trail as suggested by the lady at the information centre. She also gave me this map. The hike is about five kilometres long and leads along pastures, meadows, and irrigation canals and through the avenues that were built for training of the carriage horses. A dozen information boards explain the cultural landscape. Here I could also admire the grazing horses at leisure (upper photo). I was surprised that not all the horses were white, especially the foals were grey and almost black. Later I learned that the pure white colour only develops when the horses are grown up.
The tours take about an hour and are only in Czech, but you get information sheets in English. However, the guide spoke English very well and was happy to answer all my questions. There were only five of us on the tour and there was enough time to have a good look at the stables and everything else. There is even an indoor riding hall. Obviously, there is a class society among horses as well. The simplest stables are for the broodmares and their foals. The stallions, which are trained for ceremonial purposes, have their own individual boxes. And the horses used for equestrian competitions have somewhat larger boxes. But the first-class stables are those for the breeding stallions that represent the five lines of the Kladruby horses (lower photo). The lines have such impressive names as Generale or Generalissimus.
The complex of stables, castle and church looks very authentic, as if nothing had changed since the 19th century. But it was in 2007, after Kladruby was put on the Czech tentative List, when restoration work began and the classicist style of the stud farm was recreated. The tour ends at the central gate of the stables. From there you have direct views along the two avenues to the Josefov and Frantiskov stables, where the mares and young foals are kept. These are also roughly the directions to Prague and Vienna, the destinations for the trained Kladruber horses in the heyday of the stud farm. We know how keen the experts of ICOMOS are on this viewing axis topic. So this may also have contributed to the positive evaluation of Kladruby nad Labem.

I am still not into horses, but I enjoyed my visit more than I expected. In about three hours I learned more about horses and horse breeding than I ever wanted to know. And that's what makes WHS hunting so exciting: discovering places you would never visit otherwise. Kladruby nad Labem is certainly not on my list of top WHS, but it is unique and you have to acknowledge that Czechia has been able to fill a gap on the list.