If you want to enjoy the tour in a slightly unconventional and fun way, letting yourself be guided by the most interesting and learning something at the same time, get Nachozeno outdoor games designed for two to six participants. When completing tasks in the form of quizzes, fillers or codes at the stations depicted on the attached map, you will cover a distance of approximately ten kilometers.

If we add in the time spent tasting wines or visiting castles, you have an activity-packed day at the Valtice, which – at a reasonable pace – even older years should be able to handle. Even the game tasks are not complicated at all. As the creators themselves claim, they have prepared it more for the whole family to play, so those who like classic escape games may find it too simple.

The game begins in a square near a fountain with a sandstone statue of a beautiful girl, whom, according to legend, Prince Jan II fell in love with. from Liechtenstein. The town belonged to this important noble family from the late fourteenth century until 1945. From the main square, we can reach their former residence via three arched exits along the wine route, which we will more or less follow for the next five kilometers. .

Valtice Castle, part of the Lednice-Valtice area, is one of the most important documents of early Baroque architecture in Central Europe. At first glance, it would appear that the Liechtenstein family belongs to the wealthier families. In Valtice, they earn their money mainly by cultivating fish, growing grapes, and selling wood from the surrounding forests. We try to guess what else they get in the following quiz.

As well as a basic walking tour, you can tour the renovated apartment of Francis I., the last prince to live in the castle. The complex is also home to a unique project – the Wine Salon of the Czech Republic, where you can taste products from all wine regions, while the top 100 ranking is constantly being updated. It is open all year round, except January, when a new exhibition is being prepared.

The period after the Second World War until the fall of communism did nothing good for the castle. Some furniture was stolen and destroyed, buildings were destroyed and used inappropriately, for example as warehouses, production facilities and workshops. A tobacco dryer was built in the stables, and in 1964 the theater was dismantled and tractors began to be parked in its place.

The castle garden, where we moved to the next station, was inaccessible for decades due to the so-called iron curtain running through it. This is counterbalanced by the “care” previously given to the regularly tended French gardens and extensive natural gardens in the English style. The game takes us to the baroque statue at the top of the former amphitheater (there used to be a vineyard in its place), from which there is a fine view of the castle. It was a pair of sphinxes, Hercules, Apollo, the god Pan and Mercury playing the flutes.

Another few hundred meters also pass through the castle gardens, where there are forty species of conifers and nearly eight dozen deciduous trees. We pass by the Žabí sklep, the smallest of the four princely storehouses in the Valtice. It may have been part of the kitchen garden during the reign of Prince Charles I of Liechtenstein (1569–1627). It stores ice, vegetables and wine. Vegetable gardens and orchards spread out. Currently, it occasionally hosts social events.

In contrast to the castle complex at nearby Lednice, which also belonged to the Liechtenstein family, Valtice park was simpler in terms of small buildings. It included, among other things, the Chinese pavilion, which has not survived, as well as the brick observation deck – the gloriette – above the man-made cave, which also does not exist today. The cave itself, through which the route passes, is inaccessible due to its emergency.

After leaving the castle grounds, we continued along the wine route, which follows the state border with Austria for a few hundred meters. The next two kilometers disprove the stereotype of the “flat” south of Moravia. A bumpy asphalt road with marked bicycle paths leads between the vineyards, where you can read on the information panels what is needed to cultivate the vines or what varieties were grown here – other game tasks are related to this.

At the same time, you can enjoy views of the Valtice and the countryside. Also the roof of the surrounding landmark, the classic Colonnade in Reistná (accessible from April to September), where the final climb ends at about two hundred and eighty meters above sea level, offers a unique spectacle. In addition to the Lednice-Valtice area, you can see Pálava, Mikulov Castle and the Holy Hill above the city, Slovakia’s Lesser Carpathians and the ruins of Falkenstein Castle in Austria.

The colonnade in the form of an ancient triumphal arch with rich sculptural decoration, built between 1810 and 1823, is one of the objects protected by UNESCO. Prince Jan I built it as a family monument to the Liechtenstein family in honor of his two brothers and father who died German inscriptions from the south and north sides will help you decipher the cipher at this outpost, where the border barbed wire passed during the previous regime.

If you are more interested in the topic of border protection before November 1989, you can visit the Iron Curtain Museum which is about five minutes from the colonnade. However, the game route returned to the city and still left no trace of the wine. During the descent of about one and a half kilometers between the vineyards, views of Mikulov and the surrounding area are again available. You’ll also pass by the exemplary vineyards of the Valtice High School of Wine, which has been in operation since 1873 and is the only one of its kind in the country.

We open the envelope with the next task in a small box, where a number of dungeons and cellars are concentrated, where it will be possible to have a glass or a whole bottle. You can see, for example, the chamber beneath the Vinařská Stodola, which also includes the vast Cross Cellar from 1640, which can hold over a million liters of wine.

In a unique labyrinth of restored sections of thirteen historic thieves’ warehouses with a total length of almost a kilometer, is located the Valtické podzemí, the creation of which dates back to the late 13th century. Most of the chambers are six to twelve meters deep. Not only do tours and tastings take place inside, but you can also sit down or dance to the dulcimer.

The game progresses to the built up parts of town, specifically to the slightly “hidden” chapel near the hospital, which once served as the morgue and autopsy room. From here, a gentle climb of about seven hundred meters awaits us to the penultimate station, the Bezruč lookout, which is beautifully planted with pine trees, from where we have the grounds of Valtice Castle in the palm of our hand. We finished it near the start – on the square near the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. According to the instructions on the site nachozeno.cz/udrzitelnost, we can now prepare our game for other people.