With a lively university town, dozens of castles and chateaus and a booming food and drink scene, the South Moravia region is drawing travelers who want to experience the Czech Republic minus the crowds of Prague.
South Moravia stretches across the southern Czech border with Austria, closer to Vienna than to Prague. The region's capital is Brno, the second-largest Czech city after Prague. Brno has a bustling historical core with 80,000 students from 14 universities gathering in medieval squares, centuries-old pubs and creatively hip cafes and bars.
Two pubs oozing charm and offering brews paired with traditional dishes (sausages baked in beer, bread dumplings and roast pork and duck) are Brewery Pegas and Stopkova Plzenska Pivnice. More hip is Super Panda Circus, where bartenders whip up splashy cocktails in a speakeasy-style bar that has been called the best in the country.
Brno has long been a major business destination, hosting trade fairs on expansive exhibition grounds that are among Europe's largest.
The early geneticist Gregor Johann Mendel is Brno's most famous hometown boy. The 14th-century Augustinian abbey where Mendel lived and worked — and the 140-year-old Starobrno Brewery next door — are open for tours.
Architecture lovers will be enthralled with a visit to Villa Tugendhat, which Bauhaus-era architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed using a massive glass wall that opens to gardens. Dozens of other 1920s, architecturally significant villas line leafy streets nearby.
History buffs will want to head about a half-hour outside of Brno to one of Europe's legendary battlefields: Austerlitz, the site of Napoleon's greatest victory.
Visitors can trace the movements of the one-day battle on Dec. 2, 1805, between the French army and a larger Austrian and Russian force at Zuran hill, from where Napoleon plotted his moves and which today is topped with a memorial to the battle.
A detailed exhibition with life-size battle reconstructions and period uniforms and arms can be found at the lavishly baroque Slavkov Castle.
A major South Moravia event each year in late November and early December is a battlefield re-enactment that draws thousands of participants and spectators.
Noble homes
Another discovery is that the region, the warmest in the Czech Republic, is a wine producer and the only part of the country where wine is consumed almost as much as Czechs' first love, beer.
The most impressive of the wine-tasting spots is magnificent Valtice castle, home to the National Salon of Wine. In the castle's cool and vast underground cellar, the top 100 South Moravian wines are offered for sampling.
Both the Valtice chateau — called the Versailles of Moravia — and nearby Lednice chateau were owned for 700 years by the noble Liechtenstein family, whose dynasty extended to the small European country of the same name.
Lednice, the family's summer residence, is breathtaking, with vast, park-like grounds; miles of canals that can be traveled by boat; an Islam-inspired, 200-foot-tall minaret; and a remarkable greenhouse conservatory.
Both Lednice and Valtice, a combined Unesco World Heritage Site, are open for guided tours that take visitors through ornately decorated rooms, grand halls and formal gardens.
For more on South Moravia, see www.gotobrno.com, www.south-moravia.info and www.czechtourism.com.