Vimperk Castle: A Medieval Fortress and Renaissance Residence in Czechia
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.2
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Czechia
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Bohemia
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page11 sections
History
Vimperk is a medieval castle in Czechia, built as an early Gothic fortress around the middle of the thirteenth century, probably as a royal foundation. Its origins are traditionally associated with Purkart of Janovice, the burgrave of Zvíkov, who was recorded as Purkart of Vimperk in 1264 and may have received the castle from the king as a fief or personal property. The site occupied a strategic rocky spur above the confluence of the Křesanovský Stream and the Volyňka River.
Medieval Lords and Expansion
In the early fourteenth century, Vimperk passed for an uncertain reason to Bavor III of Strakonice before returning to the Janovice family. In 1375, the castle was pledged to the Prague burgher Jan Rotlev. King Wenceslas IV later granted the Vimperk estate and castle as a fief to the Kaplíř family of Sulevice, who expanded and rebuilt the complex during the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
In 1479, the town and castle were joined into a fortified complex. This transformation included the construction of Haselburg, a forward artillery bastion designed to protect the northern and northeastern approaches. In 1494, the castle passed by inheritance to the Malovec family of Chýnov. Petr Malovec lost it in 1547 when the property was confiscated for his participation in the uprising against Ferdinand I.
Renaissance Residence
Jáchym of Hradec bought Vimperk in 1553 and sold it the following year to Vilém of Rožmberk. Vilém transformed the medieval fortress into a Renaissance residence. During the 1560s, his brother Petr Vok of Rožmberk administered the estate and lived at the castle. Petr Vok sold Vimperk to Volf Novohradský of Kolovrat in 1601, and Volf and his son Jáchym continued the Renaissance alterations and decorative work.
The castle was damaged by fire during a siege by the Estates army in 1619, during the Bohemian Estates’ uprising against the Habsburg ruler Ferdinand I. Its owners rebuilt and remodelled the complex as a Renaissance chateau between 1622 and 1624. The date 1622 remains on the gate leading to the Upper Castle and on the entrance to the second courtyard.
Later Aristocratic Ownership
The Eggenbergs acquired Vimperk in 1630. Their limited interest in the residence meant that only some previously begun works had been completed by the end of the seventeenth century, while the wider complex received little maintenance. By 1719, Vimperk had passed to the Schwarzenbergs, who retained it until the twentieth century.
Baroque alterations were carried out during the eighteenth century. On 20 July 1857, lightning caused a major fire that almost completely burned the Upper Castle. The roofs and upper floors were destroyed, and the castle theatre, chapel, and second floor also burned. Repairs and rebuilding after the fire, followed by later nineteenth-century Neo-Renaissance alterations, created much of the appearance that survives today.
State Ownership and Conservation
After the nineteenth-century rebuilding, the former aristocratic residence was partly converted into apartments for Schwarzenberg officials. Offices and barracks later occupied parts of the complex. The Czechoslovak state nationalized the castle in 1948. During the second half of the twentieth century, parts of the buildings housed apartments for the South Bohemian State Forest Administration and offices of the Šumava Protected Landscape Area administration. The town museum also used part of the complex from 1961.
After 1990, Vimperk came under town ownership and was later sold to the Šumava National Park administration. Responsibility passed from the Ministry of the Environment to the Ministry of Culture in 2014. Since 1 January 2015, the National Heritage Institute has administered the castle and undertaken extensive repairs. Building work accompanied by archaeological and architectural surveys began in spring 2019. Vimperk is a protected cultural monument and was placed on the Czech Republic’s list of national cultural monuments in 2010. In 2025, a carved sideboard made for Kamil of Rohan returned to Sychrov on long-term loan after being found among the Vimperk collections.
Remains
Castle Layout and Medieval Defences
Vimperk stands on a rocky spur at about 750 metres above sea level, north of the historic centre of the town. Part of the complex is incorporated into the town fortifications. In its earliest form, the castle had an oval plan and was separated from the rest of the hill by a substantial ditch. An earthen ramp led to a northern gate and a first courtyard whose original buildings are unknown. Outside the main wall was a zwinger, an outer defensive enclosure between walls that exposed attackers to fire from the defenders.
The inner castle had a trapezoidal plan and was enclosed on two sides by an outer castle. Two palace wings stood along the longer sides of the inner courtyard. The partly surviving northwestern wing adjoins Vlček Tower, whose ground floor contains four bays with cross vaults and whose first floor has a barrel vault. The tower rises at the highest point of the rocky spur, is about 13 metres high, and was built in the second half of the thirteenth century.
The defensive system was altered perhaps as early as the thirteenth century. On the southwest side, the wall was moved outward and strengthened with a round turret, while a partly underground building was constructed in the space created by the change. Another round turret, and possibly a square turret, were added on the northeast. Around 1400, a round bergfried, a strong defensive keep intended mainly for defence rather than permanent residence, was built at the highest point of the first courtyard of the Upper Castle.
Courtyards and Palace Wings
The complex consists of three courtyards and the former northern outer bailey. The first courtyard is entered through a northeastern passage. It is enclosed partly by an irregular U-shaped building, mostly one storey high, whose northwestern wing survives only at ground-floor level. The first of the castle’s three fountains stands in the northeastern corner.
The second courtyard is reached through the ground-floor passage of a tall square tower. It probably corresponds to the former Lower Castle and gives access to the southeastern wing, including the museum entrance. The third courtyard occupies the area of the former Upper Castle. The terrain of the inner castle largely reflects nineteenth-century alterations.
During the late Gothic period, the entrance was moved to the east and fitted with a square gate tower. The southern side was shifted closer to the town and connected to the town walls. A three-room palace was built there, the first courtyard was divided by a wall, and the second floor of Vlček Tower was altered.
Upper Castle
The southern wing is the principal part of the Upper Castle. It rises three storeys and includes the eastern front, the southeastern wing, and the southern front with a circular staircase. The northern part of the eastern front is decorated with sgraffito panels, a wall-decoration technique made by scratching through one coating to reveal a contrasting layer beneath. Its four-light windows are divided into ten panes.
The southern facade is comparatively plain. Its above-ground floors have double, four-sash windows with eight panes. A massive corner supporting pier of dressed stone stands at the southeast corner and adjoins the wall facing the Black Tower. On the eastern ground floor, a single-leaf framed wooden door opens from the corridor.
The Upper Castle has a double-pitched roof with wooden hipped dormers covered in concrete tiles. The northeastern wing contains a six-storey tower with a carved roof. The southern part of this wing has exposed quarry-stone masonry and a double-pitched concrete-tile roof. Frescoes survive in the Upper and Lower Castles, including large vaulted ceilings associated with the Novohradský family of Kolovrat.
Chapels and Estate Buildings
The Chapel of Saint Joseph opens from the second courtyard. It probably began as a simple palace building and was altered in 1757. The chapel is a plastered rectangular structure with a gabled roof and a hipped section on its southwest side. A small bell turret with a square base stands above the presbytery, and its roof forms an octagonal pyramid.
The Chapel of the Evangelists is a small church reached from outside on the north side of the Upper Castle, in the area of the ditch. Dating from 1611, it was added externally to the original perimeter wall of the early castle. Seventeenth-century farm buildings stand in the forecourt. The castle brewery was built in 1587 and modified in 1632, while the former castle park originated during the Renaissance period.
Haselburg Bastion
Haselburg lies north of the castle on a height that became dangerous after artillery developed, because attackers could fire down on the castle from that position. The forward bastion allowed defenders to fire in a fan-shaped pattern across the northern and northeastern approaches. The first courtyard is enclosed by a wall containing the Haselburg gate.
The principal structure is a round battery tower, a fortified tower designed to mount artillery. It is 14 metres in diameter and survives to the height of its second floor. Its basement has a cross vault. The first-floor entrance was reached by a wall-walk supported on large stone corbels, which were later removed.
A defensive wall protected the area around the battery tower. At its most vulnerable point, the wall is up to eight metres thick. Its covered wall-walk has a small roof, and the wall contains an artillery embrasure, an opening through which a gun could be fired, together with two artillery chambers. A gate beneath the tower was formerly preceded by a ditch crossed by a drawbridge. A partly preserved outer wall provided additional protection.
Before the main entrance stands a wooden statue of Vilém of Rožmberk holding a model of the castle. The model depicts the complex after its nineteenth-century reconstruction, linking the surviving architectural fabric with the period that shaped much of its present form.
