Dark retreat near Prague, just outside Kutná Hora

Maybe you’re looking at a map right now. Getting to Prague is the easy part – a flight, a train, a long day on the motorway. But a dark retreat? Where does a sensible European go to spend a week in total darkness? Surprisingly often the answer is a village of thirty people an hour and a bit east of Prague. More precisely, the bottom of our garden.

We’re Tom and Lenka. Since 2013 we’ve accompanied more than 3,000 people into the dark, in five wooden cabins near Kutná Hora. This page is the short route from “hm, interesting” to the cabin door. Every step has its own longer page if you want the details.

Europe has dark retreats. The Czech Republic has most of them

Dark retreats are getting more popular all over Europe, but they’re spread very unevenly. Of the roughly 45 dark retreat centres we know of in Central Europe, more than half are in the Czech Republic. Slovakia has a fair number too; Germany, Austria and Poland only a handful each.

Why here? In Czech it’s called terapie tmou or pobyt ve tmě, and it’s an ordinary thing that people have heard of – from the newspapers, the radio, a friend of a friend. Tell a Czech you’re off to spend a week in the dark and you’ll most likely get a nod, not a worried look. Add a countryside full of quiet villages and a country you can reach from almost anywhere in Europe within a day, and the map starts to make sense. If you like the longer story, it’s in our article on why the Czech Republic.

Prague first, then one hour east

Almost everyone from abroad comes through Prague – by plane, by train or by car. From Prague main station a direct train takes you to Kutná Hora in about an hour, and during the day they run roughly every hour. By car it’s about an hour on the D11 motorway.

Kutná Hora is the old silver town whose historic centre, with St Barbara’s Church and the cathedral in Sedlec, has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1995. It’s also home to the Sedlec Ossuary, a chapel decorated with human bones. A slightly macabre warm-up for a week alone with your thoughts 🙂

From Kutná Hora it’s about 10 km south to Lomec. If you come by train, we’ll pick you up at the station for free. Flights, trains, roads and where to sleep in Prague or Kutná Hora before and after – that’s all on the page dark retreat near Prague.

Lomec: thirty people, two dogs and five dark cabins

Lomec is a tiny village of about thirty inhabitants. Our land is a hectare of garden and orchard; the nearest road is 200 metres away and behind the cabins there’s only a vegetable patch, fields and woods. In a full week five more people are lying in the dark at the bottom of our garden, and the village hardly notices.

The five cabins are called Friendship, Peace, Health, Freedom and Love. Each one is a small, well-insulated wooden house with its own bed, shower, toilet, ventilation, heating and cooling. Only the Cabin of Love has a double bed, for couples. We live in the log house fifty metres away, so help is never far. What exactly is inside is on the cabins page.

What a dark retreat actually looks like

You arrive towards evening. We show you around while the light is still on, and then you switch it off yourself. That’s it. No programme, no group, no timetable. Vegetarian food for the day arrives in the small anteroom of your cabin, where we can pass it in without letting any light through.

People tell us the first days are mostly sleep. Then time melts. Somewhere along the way the mind throws a little tantrum and asks “what am I even doing here?” That’s normal, and you can safely let it talk. Nobody locks the door: you can switch the light on or walk out whenever you want. About one in ten people leaves early, and that’s fine too. More on how the days go is on the page what a dark retreat is.

About 80 % of people come for a week. Others start with three nights or a single night – and roughly 80 % of those who did three nights tell us afterwards it was too short. A week for one person with vegetarian meals costs €595 in total, three nights €289. The full list is on the prices page.

Who comes – and who had better not

Whether you set off from Dresden, Vienna, Amsterdam or Copenhagen, you don’t need any experience with meditation and you don’t have to believe in anything. People come tired, curious, at a crossroads, or simply wanting to hear themselves think for once. Some come alone, some as a couple.

It isn’t for everyone, though. If you’re going through acute mental health difficulties, have epilepsy or a condition that needs supervision, please read the safety page first and write to us before booking. Being honest about your health is the most useful thing you can bring with you.

We’re not a clinic and we don’t promise anything. What we offer is darkness, silence, food at the door and two people nearby who have seen a lot of first nights.

The next free dates

See you in the dark – Tom & Lenka

P.S. The Czech word for darkness is tma. You won’t need it in the cabin, but it’s a nice short souvenir to take home 🙂