zámek Lednice

A Gothic fort has stood on the site since 1222, though almost nothing of it survives above ground. The Liechtenstein family, who held Lednice from the 14th century, rebuilt it first as a Renaissance chateau, then as a Baroque summer residence, before Prince Alois II swept most of that away for the Neo-Gothic palace seen today. Architect Georg Wingelmüller looked to Windsor Castle and England's Tudor country houses for the design, covering the exterior in pinnacles, tracery windows and carved stonework. Inside, the ground-floor hall was built to host European aristocracy at banquets, finished with carved wood ceilings and panelling, and the library's spiral staircase draws most visitors' eyes upward. Traces of the earlier Baroque building still sit beneath the Gothic facades, a layered record of four centuries of rebuilding on the same foundations.