Buchlov
Castle · Czechia
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One of Moravia's oldest and best-preserved castles, built as a royal hunting seat in the 13th century on a wooded ridge in the Chřiby hills. Two original towers still anchor the core, with Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque additions layered on through the centuries.
Buchlov started as a 13th-century royal castle, built to guard and administer a royal hunting ground in the Chřiby hills, and it stayed crown property into the 16th century even though no king ever lived here. Hungarian troops damaged it in 1468, and the Late Gothic rebuilding that followed added ribbed vaults and a new chapel that lasted into the early 1500s. The Berchtold family took over in 1751 and held it for two centuries, filling it with a library built on Theodore Beza's own collection and a small Egyptian mummy displayed in a room fitted out like a temple. Leopold Berchtold, Austria-Hungary's foreign minister when the First World War began, is buried at the castle. It opened as a museum in the early 19th century and survives today as one of the best-preserved castles in Moravia.
What you see
Two massive prismatic towers rise from opposite ends of a rocky plateau, the oldest surviving core of the castle, with Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque wings layered around them up the hill.
castlehistoryviewpointmuseum
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