Czech Republic · Zlínský kraj
Where to Stay in Zlín, Zlínský kraj
Zlín is a city in eastern Moravia, Czech Republic, built as a model industrial town by the Baťa shoe empire.
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Where to stay in Zlín
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Picking a base in Zlín comes down to how near the centre you want to be. The streets around the skyscraper and the old works keep the museums, the shops, and the model houses within a walk, and staying downtown suits anyone here for the modern city. The centre quiets after the working day.
Rooms sit near the tower and the squares. Out in the leafy hillside quarters, the model neighbourhoods spread up the slopes. A room in the garden districts trades the works for green streets, brick villas, and a quieter stay above the town.
The wooded hills rise past the houses. If you want the museums and the tower, stay in the centre; if you want the green and the quiet, take a room on the hill. Either way, the modern city is close at hand.
About Zlín
Zlín is the city that shoes built.
What is Zlín known for?
In the early twentieth century the Baťa company turned a small Moravian town into a modern industrial city, laid out whole in a clean functionalist style of red brick, glass, and concrete. The great Baťa skyscraper still towers over the works. Industry and design made the city.
What are the main landmarks in Zlín?
The Baťa skyscraper towers over Zlín. Its red-brick and glass tower, once the tallest in the land, rises over the old shoe works, the emblem of the city, with an office famously built inside a lift. Model streets fill the town.
Rows of identical brick houses spread across the hills, while the Tomáš Baťa Memorial and the Museum of Southeast Moravia keep the story of the shoe empire.
What is the history of Zlín?
Zlín was a quiet town until a shoemaker changed it. In 1894 Tomáš Baťa founded his shoe company here, and over the next decades it grew into a giant that clothed the feet of the world. The factory remade the town.
As the works swelled, Baťa built a whole new city for his workers, laying out streets of identical brick houses, schools, and shops in a bold modern plan. Architects gave the city one clean style. Functionalist buildings of red brick, glass, and concrete rose across Zlín, among them the great Baťa skyscraper with its famous office set inside a moving lift.
The company ruled the whole life of the town, from work to housing to schools. War and communism broke the Baťa empire. The family firm was seized and split, but the functionalist city it built still stands.
Zlín keeps its red-brick modern streets in the Moravian hills.
Where is Zlín?
Zlín lies in the wooded hills of eastern Moravia. The city fills a long valley along the Dřevnice river, ringed by the low forested ridges of the Moravian hills near the Slovak border. Woods and orchards climb the slopes.
The valley carries the town in a line.
What is the climate of Zlín?
A mild continental climate holds over the Zlín valley. Cold, snowy winters settle in the valley, and the warm summers bring storms over the wooded hills, with rain spread through the year. Mist fills the valley on autumn mornings.
The seasons pass green and mild.
How do you get to Zlín?
Zlín lies in the east of the Czech Republic. Trains and roads run to the city from Brno and Ostrava through the Moravian hills, and the highways cross toward Slovakia nearby. Regional buses link the surrounding valley towns.
Most arrive by road or rail through Moravia.
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Updated August 2026