Kratochvíle Castle

Kratochvíle Castle is a Renaissance castle in Petrův Dvůr in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It is a picturesque manorial residence surrounded by a small castle park.

The medieval moated fortified stronghold of 1569 was turned into a hunting lodge between 1583 and 1589 by William of Rosenberg. It was designed in the style of the Roman country villa and named Kratochvíle. The architect was Baldassare Maggi from Arogno, Ticino, Switzerland. The whole complex with an entrance wing, outline of fortifications, moat and drawbridge was built in the form of a slightly elongated rectangle, and the castle was built on piles of marshy ground.

The small Chapel of Our Lady in the southwest corner of the castle gardens was built between 1584 and 1589. The glory days of the castle ended when Peter Vok of Rosenberg had to sell it to Emperor Rudolf II in 1601 because of debts. The emperor gave the castle to the Eggenberg family and in 1719 it was acquired by the Schwarzenberg family. The international arrangement of the building to the layout of an Italian villa, with the open loggia on the ground floor being replaced here by a large vaulted entrance hall, which corresponded to the area of the Great Hall on the first floor, is linked to the ground floor by a staircase. On both floors rooms of varying sizes are liked to these chambers.

On the ground floor they were partly of a functional nature and on the first floor they included the private apartments of the lord and lady, and the most grandiose room of the castle the Great Gold Hall where visitors were received and which is richly decorated, as are most of the other rooms, with stucco reliefs and murals based on classical mythology by Antonio Melana. During extensive restoration experts discovered five paintings depicting scenes from the life of Samson, in the adjoining Small Gold Hall.

In the 19th century, the castle was converted into apartments for the Schwarzenberg family and in 1950 the restoration work was carried out. Kratochvíle houses an exhibition of Czech puppet and animated films with original works by notable Czech producers Jiří Trnka, Hermína Týrlová and Karel Zeman.

Text adapted from “Kratochvíle Castle” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Kratochvíle Castle ranks #2,523 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #66 of the 200 mapped in Czech Republic. Founded 1569, it is older than 37% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 718 atlas entries founded in the 16th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,567 times in the last 60 days, more than 60% of the atlas. Wikidata records about 36,000 visitors in 2022. 3 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Linz, 84 km away. It is one of the 156 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of Bohemia. See how Czech Republic compares in the castle statistics.

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