ŠEMÍKOVICE FARM
A couple of friends from my Czech literature studies days and I have a rather niche hobby: visiting places associated with important Czech poets. And so one autumn day we got in the car in Prague and headed southeast. After a two-hour drive we stop the car in Šemíkovice, a charming little village of 75 inhabitants on the edge of the Vysočina Region. “The village of Šemíkovice has given me everything from the realm of nature I put into my poetry,” Vítězslav Nezval wrote in his memoirs. His father was a teacher here at the beginning of the last century and the young Vítězslav went to the local school.
The school is currently being repaired, but the locals direct us to Šemíkovice Farm a few paces away, where we are lucky enough to meet Marek Roháček, the owner’s son. “Come in,” he says, ushering us into the beautifully renovated yard and telling us that Vítězslav Nezval was very fond of coming here, “because the local landowner had a daughter called Hedvika the same age as Nezval, and the two young people were fond of each other.” Could Hedvika have been the inspiration for the charming love poems in Nezval’s play Manon Lescaut? We’re all slightly moved. And maybe we’re wistfully remembering our first loves, so we’re pleased to let a tour of the estate bring our minds back into the present.
Privacy, tranquillity and atmosphere
Surrounded by a large garden and orchard, Šemíkovice Farm is set on four hectares of land, with a further 50 hectares of meadows, groves and woods. After tastefully renovating the farm, in 2023 the owners opened the estate as a wedding venue, a space for family gatherings and celebra- tions or team building events. Its undeniable advantage is its complete privacy. It’s an oasis of tranquillity and steeped in history, but at the same time you have all the mod cons you could ask for. “We take a very personal approach to our guests and we want them to feel at home with us. We always start with a detailed tour. Sometimes a couple will have a clear idea of what they want for their wedding, but others want me to show them what is possible. Sometimes they want to prepare everything themselves, sometimes they take our advice on tried-and-tested suppliers, or we take care of all the organisation and they just turn up on the big day with the rings,” Marek says.
Is your family spread out in different parts of the country? Or will the groom’s family be coming from Austria and the bride’s from Slovakia? Then you will appreciate Šemíkovice’s strategic location in the middle of the Czech Republic. And the venue is excellent for multi-day weddings. You can rent the farmhouse for at least three days (most often from Friday to Sunday), but you can also spend a whole week here – there are plenty of places to explore in the area. To name just a few: Třebíč with its UNESCO-listed Jewish centre; Znojmo with the Romanesque Basilica of St Catherine; Moravský Krumlov with the astonishing and huge Slavonic Epic painting by Alfons Mucha; Dolní Kounice with the ruins of the Rosa Coeli Monastery; Vranov nad Dyjí with its Baroque castle... Or you can just walk out of the farm’s gates and wander through the Rokytná nature park, admiring the meanders of the Rokytná and Rouchovanka rivers and the purple cyclamen and keeping an eye open for the turquoise wings of the common kingfisher. The experience is even more enjoyable when you’re with your loved ones, whom you may see only once a year if you live in different parts of the world.
A wedding tailored for you
“You can have the ceremony in the gardens next to the house, in the orchard by a hundred-year-old apple tree, by the trout pond, in the meadow, by the reservoir overlooking the mouflon reserve, or anywhere else in the area,” Marek says. The magnificent barn with its two glazed doors is the perfect setting for a wedding reception and party. One door leads to a paved yard, the other to a sunny terrace and, further on, to a garden with a pond. The barn can hold up to a hundred people, a band, a barista counter... whatever you want. On warm summer nights you can sit with a glass of wine in the garden and gaze at the stars, but the wedding season continues into the winter here. There’s a big fireplace (and a clever heating system) in the barn, and there’s a lot to be said for a January wedding with white furs, elegant arrangements of grasses in myriad shades of beige and mulled wine cupped between your hands.
The wedding facilities include a large kitchen and two chilled rooms.We can imagine a wedding weekend kicking off with antipasti and Aperol spritz with our friends from Italy on Friday, leaving the kitchen in the hands of professional caterers on the big day itself, and finishing on Sunday with hearty, restorative chicken broth by grandma. You can also arrange with the owners to provide venison from their woods or freshwater fish from local the ponds.
The farmhouse has a spacious bridal suite – complete with make-up table and a rocking chair. There are fifteen rooms in total (56 beds), each with its own bathroom and kitchenette with cooking facilities. The interior is dominated by light wood and a colour scheme of white and hues of grey. This year, the owners added the option of glamping for four to six people in a hunting hut in the nearby oak woods. Caravans can also be parked in the grounds, you can pitch tents... in short, everyone will find something to suit their taste, and children can get their first taste of camping out, petting a goat or launching a boat crafted from bark in the local stream.
Sustainability is one of the watchwords at Šemíkovice Farm: recycling, solar panels, grey water is used for watering the orchards, and wood from the nearby forest is used for heating. The owners take good care of the surrounding area, restoring the wetland and the apple orchard, and they plan to plant a hundred new trees a year. By the way, you can even plant your own pear or apple tree here and come back to celebrate your wedding anniversaries beside it... When we leave, we have lots of experiences to talk about, and we all hope that we’ll soon be lucky enough to spend more than just one afternoon in this charming place. It’s hard to think of a better venue for a wedding.
Text: Hana Janišová | Photos: Jakub Hasák, Petra Gruberová, Šemíkovice Farm | Article partner: Šemíkovice Farm, semikovice.cz
