Dark retreat near Prague: Kutná Hora and how to get here

If you’re planning a dark retreat near Prague, you’re really planning two journeys. One across Europe to a small Czech village, and one into the dark. The second one we’ll help you with in person. The first one is on this page – from the airport or the station all the way to our garden gate.

Lenka and I have been running dark retreats near Kutná Hora since 2013. Over the years we’ve learned that people from abroad rarely worry about the darkness itself. They worry about the train connection, the last few kilometres and whether anyone will be waiting at the station. So let’s start there.

Why a dark retreat in the Czech Republic?

Of the roughly 45 dark retreat centres we know of in Central Europe, more than half are in the Czech Republic. Slovakia has about ten, Germany a handful, Austria and Poland a couple each. In Czech the practice is called terapie tmou or pobyt ve tmě – “a stay in the dark” – and it’s a familiar idea here. People have read about it, heard it on the radio, or know someone who has done it.

The other reason is plain geography. The Czech Republic sits in the middle of Europe, with quiet countryside a short train ride from the capital. Dresden, Vienna and Munich are closer than many people realise. Why so many centres ended up here is a longer story, and we’ve told it in a separate article.

Prague: where almost every journey starts

By plane

You’ll land at Václav Havel Airport Prague. From there a bus takes you to the city centre or straight to the main station (Praha hlavní nádraží) in roughly 30 to 45 minutes – either the AE airport express bus, or a city bus (119 or 59) followed by the metro. From the main station you continue by train to Kutná Hora.

By train

Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Budapest and Warsaw all have direct trains to Prague. If you come from Vienna or Brno, look out for trains running via Havlíčkův Brod: some of them stop in Čáslav and Kutná Hora, so you can skip Prague altogether. Please check the current timetable yourself on cd.cz – timetables change and we’d rather not send you to a platform that no longer exists.

By car

Driving times to Lomec are roughly: Dresden about 2.5 hours, Vienna about 3.5 hours, Berlin about 4.5 hours, Munich about 5 hours, Brno about 1.5 hours. From Prague take the D11 towards Hradec Králové, leave at Kolín and follow the signs to Kutná Hora. Parking at our place is free, and your car gets a week off as well.

Kutná Hora, the silver town one hour east

From Prague main station a direct train to Kutná Hora main station (Kutná Hora hlavní nádraží) takes about an hour, and during the day there’s roughly one every hour. By car it’s also about an hour.

Kutná Hora grew rich on silver in the Middle Ages, and you can still see it. The historic centre with St Barbara’s Church and the Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady in Sedlec has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995. A few things worth your time:

• St Barbara’s Church – the Gothic church at the edge of the old town. Walk there slowly; it’s more impressive than any photo.
• Barborská Street – the promenade with a row of statues above the valley, leading to St Barbara’s. A good place to stand still for a moment.
• The Jesuit College – today the GASK art gallery, right next to St Barbara’s.
• The Italian Court (Vlašský dvůr) – the former royal mint, where the silver turned into coins.
• The silver mine – a tour of the medieval tunnel at Hrádek, part of the Czech Museum of Silver. Underground, narrow, and yes, quite dark – a gentle rehearsal.
• The Sedlec Ossuary – the Chapel of All Saints in Sedlec, decorated with human bones. Strange, quiet and hard to forget.

One honest tip: see Kutná Hora before your stay, or after, but not in a hurry either way. Straight after the dark, the town feels loud and bright even on a sleepy Sunday. People tell us that light, colours and tastes are very sharp in the first hours. A slow walk and a coffee are plenty. Our Kutná Hora travel guide has more ideas.

The last ten kilometres: Lomec

Lomec is a village of about thirty people, roughly 10 km south of Kutná Hora. By car it’s around 20 minutes from Kutná Hora and around 1 hour 15 minutes from Prague (about 90 km). For your navigation, our garden gate is at GPS 49.8678117 N, 15.2862292 E.

If you come by train, there are three ways to cover the last bit:

1. We pick you up. On request, we’ll collect you by car at the station in Kutná Hora, Čáslav or Bykáň, free of charge. Just tell us which train you’re on, and you can stop checking your phone.
2. You walk the last 6 km. Trains from Kutná Hora arrive at the small stop of Bykáň at 15:30 and 17:30. From there it’s about an hour on foot through Úmonín – past the chateau, through a little pine wood and along a field track. We recommend it; it’s a good way to slow down before the dark.
3. The local bus. On weekdays a regional bus from Kutná Hora runs a few times a day and stops on the village green, 60 metres from our gate. At weekends it doesn’t come to Lomec.

A step-by-step version, from the arrivals hall to the cabin door, is in the article From Prague to Kutná Hora.

How much time to plan

Stays begin towards evening on fixed days of the week:

Length	Arrival	Good to know
1 night	Tuesday	A first taste – easy to fit into a city trip.
3 nights	Wednesday or Saturday	About 80 % say afterwards it was too short.
1 week	Saturday (exceptionally Wednesday)	What about 80 % of people choose.
Longer	by arrangement	In multiples of a week.

From Prague city centre to our gate, allow two to three hours including connections. So the relaxed plan looks like this: arrive in Prague the day before or early in the morning, take a late-morning or midday train to Kutná Hora, have a look around the old town, and reach Lomec towards evening. If you’re flying in on the same day, give yourself plenty of margin – a delayed flight is annoying, a delayed flight with a tight connection is stressful, and you don’t want to start your dark retreat out of breath.

On the way back, don’t book the earliest flight home. The first hours after the dark are worth taking slowly. Our sample 10-day itinerary with Prague, Kutná Hora and a week in the dark shows how it can fit together.

Where to sleep before and after

We don’t run a hotel – we run dark retreats. For a night before or after your stay, there are plenty of hotels in both Prague and Kutná Hora, and booking one is up to you. Prague gives you the big city with the castle and the old town; Kutná Hora is smaller and calmer, which many people appreciate after a week of silence. A night in Kutná Hora on the way out is a gentle step back into the world, and the train to Prague the next day feels much easier.

And then, after all the trains and buses, you’ll stand at our gate in Lomec, we’ll show you your cabin, and for a while none of it will matter. That’s rather the point 🙂

See you in the dark – Tom & Lenka