Tabor

Tabor, a town in western Bohemia, on the Francis-Joseph railway, 104 kilometres from Prague. Pop. (1908) 10,703. It is the chief town of a government district and the seat of a provincial law-court, and also of an industrial school. The town was founded in 1420 by the more advanced party of the church-reformers or Hussites, who, as it became their centre, soon began to be known as the Taborites. The town is situated on the summit of an isolated hill separated from the surrounding country by the Luznice stream and by an extensive pond, to which the Hussites gave the biblical name of Jordan. The historical importance of the city of Tabor only ceased when it was captured by King George of Podebrad in 1452. Though a large part of the ancient fortifications has recently been demolished, Tabor - or Hradiste Hory Tabor, the castle of the Tabor Hill, as it was called in the Hussite period - has still preserved many memorials of its past fame. In the centre of the city is the market-place (rynt). Only very narrow streets lead to it, to render the approach to it more difficult in time of war. In the centre of the market-place is the statue of Lizka, the greatest of the Taborite leaders. Here also is the diaconal church, built in 1516 in the style of the Bohemian Renaissance, and the town hall, in connexion with which a museum has been founded, which contains interesting memorials of the Hussite period. Some parts of the ancient fortifications and the very ancient Kotnov tower also still exist.

See Thir, Hradiste Hory Tabor (1895).