A Century of Masaryk’s Cottage on Šerlich: A Beacon of First Republic Spirit, Patriotism, and Adventure – Your Guide to Beating Boredom!

The Jirásek Mountain Trail extends all along the ridge of the Orlické Mountains as well as its surrounding areas. If you decide to hike the whole trail, it spans 170 km from Broumov to Litomyšl.

Jirásek’s Mountain Route stretches across the Orlické Mountains from east to west and is currently marked with a red sign on the trails. This route was first introduced by Alois Jirásek in 1921 from the balcony of the Panorama cottage located in Deštné v Orlických horách. Initially, it ran from Nové Město nad Metují to Jablonné nad Orlicí, but over time, out of admiration for the writer, it was extended to cover the distance from Broumov to Litomyšl, reaching almost 170 kilometres.

The Czech Tourist Club originally marked this long route in 1893, but at that time, it only connected Rychnov nad Kněžnou with Deštné and Vrchmezí. The well-known crossroads appeared differently back then—with a lookout tower and a mountain lodge. Its owner was Heinrich Rübartsch, who constructed it in 1882.

Numerous photographs showcase this famous Rübartsch hut. Heinrich was fortunate that Vrchmezí was situated right on the border—once between Austria-Hungary and Prussia. Tourists would gather at a large table outside the cottage, where they could sit one side in Bohemia and on the other in Prussia. Sadly, the cottage burned down in May of 1945 and has not been rebuilt. A new lookout tower was finally established at the summit of Vrchmezí in 2020, but now it rests on the Polish side of the mountain.

The professors who devoted their significant efforts to marking the Jirásek Trail included Josef Sallač, Čeněk Chyský, and Karel Březina, along with their students from the Rychnov Gymnasium. In 1921, the now seventy-year-old Alois Jirásek visited to see the completed work, which was dedicated to him with much honor. Jirásek was staying in Deštné, specifically in the Dříš area, at the Panorama cottage. A memorial plaque still stands there to remember this event.

New huts have emerged like mushrooms after rain

As tourism flourished in the Eagle Mountains, new lodges began to appear at the start of the century, particularly near the newly designated mountain trails, called “huts.” One such hut is the Cihalka Cottage in Olesnica, built in 1869 along the trail from Olešnice to the Dušniky spa in what was then Prussia.
Czech patriots dreamed of having their own charming lodge in the mountains. Thanks to a public fundraising effort in 1925, Masaryk’s cottage on Šerlich was constructed based on the design by architect Bohuslav Fuchs. By 1935, Šerlich also hosted a meteorological station , and a bust of President T. G. Masaryk was inaugurated in front of the cottage by Leoš Kubíček. Throughout the years, the name of the hut had to be changed several times—under Hitler, it was called Sudeten Baude, and under the communists, it became Cottage on Šerlich. Celebrations for the centenary of one of the most significant tourist lodges in the Czech Republic, named after the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, will take place on 6 September 2025. You can look forward to hikes, visits to the renowned spots of the Eagle Mountains, and even displays of Mountain Service equipment.
Not wanting to be left behind, the Germans established in 1928 a significant facility called Hindenburg Baude under Vrchmezi, intended as a large-capacity rival to Masaryk’s hut. The Czechs humorously referred to it as “trucbaude.” After the war, this German cottage faced the same fate as the Rübartsch hut—it too burned down under unexplained circumstances and has yet to be rebuilt.
You can find other lodges from the early part of the century, like the Kramář’s cottage on Suchý vrch, the Na Čihák cottage near the Zemská brána, or the Orlická cottage close to Rampušák, as well as Kaspar’s cottage at Adam, Práz’s hut in Šediviny, or the Šerlišský mill.