hrad Trosky
Castle · Czechia
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Its two dark towers crown a pair of basalt volcanic plugs and are visible for miles across Bohemian Paradise, making Trosky the single most recognizable silhouette on any ride through the region. The lower rock (47 m) carries the two-storey Baba ("Crone") tower, the higher (57 m) the four-sided Panna ("Maiden") tower, with residential buildings and fortifications once linking the two. Čeněk of Wartenberg founded the castle in the second half of the 14th century, first recorded in 1396, before financial trouble forced him to hand it to King Wenceslaus IV in the early 1390s; it later passed through the Bergau, Zajíc, Šelmberk and Lobkowicz families. During the Hussite Wars it stood as a center of Catholic resistance and was never taken by the Taborite forces that besieged it in 1428, though a fire that year damaged it. It met its final ruin in 1648, burned out completely by the Imperial Army during the Thirty Years' War and never rebuilt.
The twin towers are what's left of the volcano's own plumbing. Trosky built up in the Tertiary as a cinder cone around two feeder channels carrying magma toward the surface, and millions of years of weathering stripped away the loose ash and cinder that made up the cone. What remained standing was the hardened volcanic rock that had filled those channels, exposed today as the two plugs. The summit is protected as a natural monument, and the twin-peaked silhouette serves as the visual emblem of the whole Bohemian Paradise region, appearing on maps and signage across Český ráj. The Apolena nature reserve lies on the hill's southeastern foot.
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