Naučná stezka Třeboň
The Hradec Gate
At the east side of the square one leaves the old town center through the “Hradec gate”, from where the old road leads to the Town of Jindrichuv Hradec. The original gate dates from 1525–1527, when it became part of the town fortifications. Several times the gate succumbed to fires that struck the city, and always it was rebuilt. The gate you see today was last rebuilt in 1875.
The Hradec gate was also the beginning of oldest roads known in this region, that is, the road to the Austrian Litschau. The first section of this road went from the gate to the nearby Kopečka (now a suburb of Trebon) through deep and treacherous swamps. The swamps were crossed through a badly maintained wooden gangway of about two kilometer. In exchange for the land flooded during the construction of the pond Svet, the Třeboň people got the barren land just behind the Hradec gate along the gangway. The allocation of the land by William of Rozmberk was motivated in a letter by pond builder Jakub Krčín stating “… From that land of your grace to that time, no benefit comes …".
Hradecka brana
Only after 1665, when Johann Adolf of Schwarzenberg decided to drain the Castle grounds and surrounding wet meadows through a drainage canal system, the ground was dried enough to work on. At Kopečka the road branched to Hradec and to Suchdol. A short way on the road to Suchdol, in the past the Litschau road would branch of to the left and cross the River Luznice, a crossing already mentioned in 1374. Later a second crossing was needed to pass the New River and continue into what is now Austria.
