Žuráň

Czechia

Žuráň (286m) holds a 5th–6th century Germanic tumulus and was the command post from which Napoleon surveyed the Battle of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805. A small memorial with battlefield map and flags of all participating nations stands at the peak.

At half past seven on the morning of 2 December 1805, the sun broke red over the ridge behind Holubice and silenced the officers gathered on this rise, Napoleon among them: it burned off the fog hiding the French lines while lighting up the Allied columns filing down into the valley below. From here, watching the ground open from Santon to the Pratecký heights, he sent Marshal Soult's corps forward out of Jiříkovice in the maneuver later known as the Lion's Leap, splitting the Russian and Austrian armies and deciding the Battle of the Three Emperors before noon. The rise had been a landmark centuries before any army stood on it: excavations in 1948-1950 by archaeologist Josef Poulík opened a stone-covered barrow field some 80 metres across, ringed by a dry-stone wall, holding chamber graves from the Migration Period, and fragments of glass bowls and embroidered garments recovered from them point to the highest rank of 5th-6th century Germanic society. Poulík identified the Lombard king Wacho as buried here, though later historians have not been able to confirm whose graves these actually were. Locally the hill is still known as Napoleon's Table.

From riders

What you'll see

A grass hilltop crowned by two maples and a single stone monument, the ground falling away on every side to the wooded rise of Santon and the long ridge of the Pratecký heights, the old battlefield spread out below.

Practical

Free to visit year-round; the hill rises about 1 km north of Šlapanice, and a visit takes roughly half an hour.

Checked 13 August 2026

HistoryBattlefieldArchaeologyViewpoint