File:Tabor, Bohemia, 9 Oct 1993 - Kostel Proměnění Páně na hoře Tábor.jpg

English: Kostel Proměnění Páně na hoře Tábor - church and square, Tabor, Bohemia, Czech Republic.

Church of the Transfiguration, Tabor, Bohemia, Czech Republic.
Tabor was one of two places I ever visited that I wanted to take lots more photos of than I expected, but was unable to find any film for sale anywhere in town (the other being Cairo, Illinois.)
From my old travel account:

In the morning I took the train for Tabor. The ride north from České Budějovice takes 2 hours with frequent stops. We pass through the sizable city of Vesli and the very polluted industrial town of Slobeslav. At the Tabor train station I look in the restaurant--I see waiters "washing" beer mugs by quickly dunking them in a still sink of tepid water. Hmmm.
Some background information on Tabor's interesting history deserves mentioning. Back at the start of the 1400's, Bohemian Theologian Jan Hus, a dean at the University of Prague, gained notoriety by speaking out against corruption in the Catholic Church. Although Hus favored reform within the Church rather than breaking with it, he was burned as a heretic (in this century the Vatican decided his execution was wrong). Hus's execution angered many in Bohemia, and led some of his followers to advocate severing all ties with Rome. (To this day Hus is regarded as a symbol of Czec defiance and pride, and the day of his death is marked as a national holiday.) Some of the most radical "Husites" established a commune in south Bohemia, and built this city called "Tabor" (named after the mountain in Palestine where they believed Christ's Transfiguration occurred). They rejected all ties to the Vatican, and held that the Bible was the only authority on religion. The Taborites, as they came to be known, believed that Christ's second coming was imminent, and He'd come to earth at Tabor. They did not believe in private ownership of earthly possessions. Soon people came from across Europe to join the commune, placing all their possessions in large stone urns in the center of the town square. Taborites took work according to their abilities. (The former Czechoslovak Marxist regime celebrated the Taborites as proto-communists.) When the Pope ordered suppression of all Husites, the Taborites took up arms--and enjoyed military success and security for almost 20 years, controlling much of Bohemia, until at last defeated in fierce fighting in 1434 by a coalition of European nobility who could agree only that the Taborites (who rejected the divine right of kings and nobles to rule) were too dangerous to be allowed to exist.
Across from Tabor's train station is a park with a statue of Hus about to be burnt. My guidebook says the statue was a favorite of Franz Kafka's. My guidebook reveals several interesting details about Tabor's old town, but it doesn't mention the pretty Bel Epoc new town I must pass through to get there--and the New Town is one of the most pleasant I've seen. In front of a school is a rare remnant of the old regime: a bronze statue of a Soviet soldier, with a machine gun slung over his shoulder, hoisting a baby up in his hands. The inscription on the base consists of a hammer & sickle and the date "1945".
I find Tabor's Old Town quickly captivating. After Trebon I feared I'd had my fill of Old Bohemia, but I find this place freshly interesting. The town's streets were purposefully built crooked and irregularly intersecting as a defensive measure to baffle outsiders. A straight lane was later plowed though town going in and out of the large main square, but the rest of the side streets are still intact.
The large Old Town Square is lined with attractive 4 story houses, shops, a couple restaurants, a church, a small hotel, and the obligatory inexplicably closed Czec museum. The square appears clean, well restored, and prosperous, but the winding imperfectly cobbled side streets present a different impression. One third of the old town's buildings seem to be abandoned. Some homes seem to have been vacant for centuries, others only since earlier in this century (I judge by peering in windowless window-frames at varying amounts and types of rubble, presence or absence of gas, electric, or water fixtures). I run out of film, and discover there is literally nowhere in town to buy film on a Saturday afternoon. I miss some good shots of Renaissance houses, now home only to pigeons and cats.
On the far edge of the Old Town is a fortress with a good small museum of Medieval Peasant life. The museum's depiction of the Medieval nobility as bloodsucking leaches living off the labor of oppressed peasantry has not been changed since the old regime--but of course has no need for change. The tower of the museum/fortress provides a splendid view of the hilltop town and surrounding valleys. I wish to buy postcards, but the museum finds it impossible to break my 500 krona (approx $19) bill. Tabor is not "flush". A local is embarrassed to admit that the town brewery has closed down. Tabor is not, however, without optimism. Another Old Town side street has a new art gallery. Small rooms on 2 levels display abstract glass works by young Bohemians. Forms like frozen ocean waves and whirlpool vortexes glow with the light of small electric bulbs beneath them, casting an eerie glow in the "400 year old" dirt-floored cellar. Outside, wire mesh holds bits of plaster and building ornament as if caught in mid tumble at the 2nd story level--apparently a commentary on the town's architectural decay.