Zlatá koruna Monastery

This guide to Zlatá koruna Monastery near Český Krumlov follows Bohumír Bylanský, the last Cistercian abbot, who took charge in 1755 of a community adrift and spent thirty years tightening its discipline, introducing potatoes and mulberries for silk, reforesting the estate and opening a school for local children. It turns on what happened in 1785, when Emperor Joseph II signed a single decree dissolving monasteries across his empire and this one was on the list. The Schwarzenberg family then bought the buildings, left with no monks to fill them.