17. U jelena House (Stag House) No. 61

The attention of passers-by is attracted by a striking burgher house situated under the terraces on castle hill, in a narrow section of Pivovarská Street. Tourists and local students from the nearby secondary school mingle with cars, creating frequent traffic jams. The chaos is watched condescendingly by a stag’s head, with actual antlers and a crucifix, all parts of a scene from the legend of St. Hubert, painted on the front wall. The stag’s neck and the head gradually change from a painting into a sculpture, and the atmosphere of the hunt is intensified by the neighbouring oriel with a painting of a landscape containing a hunter with a bow and a pack of hounds. The motifs employed support the opinion that the house was originally a gamekeeper’s lodge or belonged to someone working in the forest. The U jelena House is one of the oldest outside the square and a stubbornly defended legend still has it that it is the oldest burgher house in Vimperk. This was, however, disproved by facts revealed in the process of restoration that has been carried out by the present owner since the 1990s. The present shape of the house goes back to the 17th century, with outside wall paintings dating from a century later. The picturesqueness of the house is underlined, in addition to the oriel and the paintings, by a decorated staircase of stone leading to the first floor. A 2005-restoration revealed written documents deposited there in an earlier restoration in 1908. A small tin box contained, among other things, a German poem inspired by the great fire of Vimperk in 1904, written by Ludwig Stadler, a scrivener from České Budějovice.