Gmend

Gmend's lively cafe-filled Marktplatz is a pleasant place to begin a stroll through town. A bit farther southwest, the Monsterplatz hosts the 14th-century Heilig-Kreuz-Monster, the oldest church with a Gothic nave in Southern Germany. The architect, Peter Parler, born in Gm?nd in 1330, designed one wing and later replicated it in his plan of Prague's principal cathedral. Somebody must have calculated wrong though because in the late 1400s, the towers of the Church fell down, but-compensating for this shortcoming-the exterior is covered in frightening statues that range from tortured human figures to large-fanged beasts protruding horizontally in every direction. (Entrance around $1.)