Zámek Slavkov

Slavkov Castle runs today as a house museum: a multimedia exhibition on the Battle of Austerlitz fills part of it, alongside what survives of the Kaunitz family's centuries-old art gallery on the first floor. The Baroque palace standing today, 115 rooms around a U-shaped courtyard, was built from 1696 to designs by the Italian architect Domenico Martinelli, replacing the Renaissance chateau the Kaunitz family had raised on the site of a 13th-century Teutonic Knights fortress. The Kaunitz held Slavkov as their family seat for over four hundred years after 1509, including Prince Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz-Rietberg, chancellor to four Habsburg rulers and the diplomat who arranged the marriage of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to bind Austria and France together. Four days after the battle fought on the town's edge in December 1805, the armistice ending it was signed inside the palace's oval ceremonial hall. The Kaunitz line ended in 1919, the estate passed briefly to the Hungarian Palffy family, and the state took it over after the war; it has been a national cultural monument since 2008.