Pecka Castle: A Medieval Fortress and Renaissance Palace in Czechia
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Czechia
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Bohemia
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page14 sections
History
Pecka Castle is a fourteenth-century castle above the town of Pecka in Czechia, built at the beginning of the fourteenth century, probably on the site of an earlier fortified settlement. It takes its name from the hill on which it stands, while the town acquired its name from the castle. The fortress developed through medieval, Renaissance, and early modern phases before fire and neglect reduced it to ruins.
Medieval Origins and Hussite Conflict
In 1322, Pecka was recorded as the property of Budivoj of Pecka, who is also identified as its builder. By 1365, the castle was held by the brothers Hereš, Mutina, and Jan of Pecka. In the early fifteenth century, it passed to the lords of Železnice.
Jarek of Železnice and Pecka maintained the Catholic confession in his domain until the castle was besieged by the Orphans from August 1432 to February 1433. The Orphans were a radical Hussite military and religious faction active during the Hussite Wars. After negotiating a truce, Jarek retained his estates, joined the Orphans, and permitted Utraquism, a Bohemian Christian movement that allowed communion with both bread and wine, in his domain.
Expansion and Renaissance Transformation
Pecka later passed among several noble families, including the lords of Hořice, the Škopkas of Bílé Otradovice, the lords of Valdštejn, and the Trauttmansdorffs. The lords of Hořice acquired it in 1475 and rebuilt the original southern section. Further alterations followed during the sixteenth century.
From 1543, the castle belonged to Jindřich Škopek of Bílé Otradovice. He greatly enlarged the complex, which was subsequently divided between his sons Karel and Adam. A later fire damaged the buildings, and the castle was repaired and expanded again.
Barbora, Karel’s widow, married Kryštof Harant of Polžice and Bezdružice, bringing him lordship of the castle. Harant was a multilingual traveler, writer, composer, soldier, and politician who served Rudolf II, the Habsburg emperor and patron of the arts and sciences who ruled the Holy Roman Empire from 1576 to 1612. Harant later changed from Catholicism to the Utraquist faith. In 1612, Adam sold his share of Pecka to Harant’s third wife.
Confiscation, Neglect, and Preservation
In 1621, troops commanded by Albrecht of Valdštejn, also known as Albrecht von Wallenstein, came to Pecka and arrested Harant. Harant was accused in Prague of taking part in the siege of Vienna and was executed in the Old Town Square. His property was confiscated, and Valdštejn received Pecka. In 1627, he gave the estate to the Carthusian monastery at Valdice, which he had founded. The Carthusians were a Catholic order devoted to enclosed, contemplative monastic life, and the monastery retained Pecka until 1782.
From the eighteenth century, the castle gradually fell into neglect. A fire in the town in 1830 spread to Pecka and burned the castle completely. Two rooms and a shelter remained, and an elderly woman occupied the shelter as the final resident of the castle. Before or around 1844, the ruins were visited, described, and drawn by Franz Alexander Heber, a nineteenth-century historian and illustrator of Bohemian castles and fortresses.
Partial repairs and safeguarding took place in 1940, when the complex was adapted for museum use. The reconstructed Harant Palace now presents exhibitions on the history of the castle, Kryštof Harant’s life and work, and the Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Another room explores rural life in the Podkrkonoší region.
Remains
Pecka Castle occupies the flat summit of a low ridge running north to south on Pecka Hill, approximately 461 metres above sea level. The hill lies within the Sub-Krkonoš Permocarboniferous Basin, a geological basin formed from rocks of the Permian and Carboniferous periods. Coarse- and medium-grained arkoses, which are sandstones rich in feldspar, together with arkosic sandstones and conglomerates, supplied the building stone quarried at the site.
Fortifications and Entrance
Ditch, Rampart, and Approaches
The original castle was enclosed by an elliptical ditch, much of it cut artificially into the bedrock, with an outer rampart. The deepest cutting was required on the south and east, where the slight natural rise had to be increased. The ditch is now largely filled. Two historic approaches led to the fortress, one from the west toward the gate and another from the town around the ditch. The western approach ends at a three-arched bridge. A drawbridge formerly connected the bridge with the castle.
Gate and Towers
The entrance gate survives as side walls and a passage. During the first half of the sixteenth century, the fortified entrance and its barbican were decorated with arcades open toward the courtyard. Renaissance rebuilding extended the gate with an outer section. The original defensive walls were approximately four to five metres thick. A large cylindrical tower stood beside the entrance and at the corner of the palace. Its upper part was demolished in 1664, leaving the base, while a smaller tower protecting the southern residential palace is largely destroyed.
Courtyard and Southern Palace
Central Courtyard
The square courtyard is enclosed by ruined walls. Its former buildings carried heraldic emblems associated with families related to the Škopkas of Bílé Otradovice and the Harants of Polžice and Bezdružice. The surviving courtyard walls preserve the arrangement of the castle’s principal enclosed space.
Southern Palace
The southern palace, also called the Great House or South House, was square in plan. Its first floor contained rooms with large vaulted windows, while loopholes occupied the second floor. A chapel stood in the southwest corner, with a cellar and several chambers behind the tower. Old beer and wine cellars survive beneath the former palace.
Harant Palace and Domestic Buildings
Renaissance Palace
The western defensive wall of the original fortress was dismantled, and around 1600 a two-storey Renaissance palace was built between the entrance gate and the earlier palace. Known as the Harant Palace, it retains remnants of sgraffito, a decoration made by scratching through one surface coating to reveal a differently colored layer beneath. The reconstructed building contains seven interior rooms, a torture chamber, and cellars.
Domestic Section
The former domestic section included a vaulted kitchen on the ground floor, stairs leading to rooms above, and Harant’s office. A few room walls and a tall chimney now survive from this part of the complex. Together with the reconstructed palace interiors, these remains form the castle’s accessible interior route, described as the only such castle interior accessible in the Krkonoše and Sub-Krkonoší regions.
