HISTORY

Blansek

Blansek is a substantial castle ruin overlooking the Punkva valley in the Moravian Karst. Protected since 1964, it stands half a kilometre from the Macocha chasm, with Punkevní caves directly below.

Bishop Bruno of Schauenburg of Olomouc built the castle in the second half of the 13th century, first recorded in 1275, as the fortified seat of an episcopal district running to more than thirty manorial estates. It held out through the Hussite wars as one of bishop Jan Zelezny's strongholds, surviving assaults in 1424 and 1431, and a 1440 gathering of the bishopric's vassals still met inside its walls. Within another generation a fire gutted the castle, and by 1461 it stood empty for good, though local tradition holds it was patched up once more against the Swedes during the Thirty Years' War. Excavations at the site turned up finely decorated stove tiles carrying the heraldry of the Kravar family, the last noble household known to have held it before the fire. Crumbling walls were dismantled for safety in the 1930s, and what survives today keeps slowly shrinking toward the valley below.

From riders

What you'll see

A double moat, cut straight into the rock, still separates the castle's roughly 70-by-25-metre Gothic core from the ruined outer ward beside it.

Practical

The ruin sits well below the marked trail, so reaching it means a steep, unmarked descent from the trailhead.

Checked 13 August 2026

CastleRuinHistory