Things to Do in Moravian Gallery

Governor's Palace baroque interiors

Climb the salmon-pink staircase where the plaster swirls like frozen icing. You'll see ceiling frescoes that still smell faintly of linseed oil. The mirrored antechamber throws your reflection into infinity. A single spotlight makes the gilded stucco shimmer like wet sand.

Josef Hoffmann's Industrial Arts Museum print room

The air tastes of paper dust and iron. You'll hear the rhythmic clack of a 1900s pedal-powered guillotine while staff pull emerald-green ink across a poster press. Keep an eye out for the original Morris & Co. wallpaper swatches. Brno bought them direct from London in 1912.

Museum of Applied Arts clock gallery

Tiny gears click like mechanical crickets inside Biedermeier long-case clocks. The room smells of beeswax and old cedar. Sun hits the enamel dials at about 3 p.m. and throws turquoise flecks across the oak floorboards.

Pražák Palace Art Nouveau café

Sit beneath the original Loos & Co. light fixtures. Petal-shaped glass hums faintly when the trams rumble past outside. The coffee arrives smelling of dark chocolate and burnt caramel. You can taste coal-smoke in the air that drifts in from the courtyard chimneys.

Jurkovicova myslivna hunting lodge side trip

A twenty-minute tram ride south delivers you to this pine-scented log cabin on steroids. Giant carved bear paws serve as door handles. A tiled stove radiates dry heat smelling of resin. The surrounding woods echo with woodpeckers and the occasional crack of a distant target-shooter.

Staré Brno - leafy streets behind the Augustinian monastery where you'll wake to bells and the smell of fresh-baked rohlíky from the corner bakery

Špilberk - uphill quarter of pastel townhouses, five minutes' walk to the Governor's Palace yet surprisingly quiet once the cannon museum closes

Veveri - studenty riverside strip dotted with beer gardens. Tram 5 whisks you to the gallery in seven minutes flat

Trnitá - former textile warehouses turned loft apartments, still scented with machine oil and echoing with seagulls that follow the Svratka river

Černá Pole - villa district where functionalist houses hide behind chestnut trees; Le Corbusier fans geek out here

Jundrov - village-on-the-edge feel, rooster crows at dawn and an easy bike path along the river to the hunting-lodge annexe