Žacléř Castle: A Renaissance Castle Above Žacléř in Czechia
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 3.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Czechia
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Bohemia
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page9 sections
History
Žacléř Castle is a Renaissance castle above the town of Žacléř in Czechia, rebuilt in 1555 on the site of an earlier medieval fortress. The original stronghold probably guarded the Trautenau route, part of the old trade road from Prague through Hradec Králové and Trutnov toward Silesia. The castle’s history reflects the changing political, military, and economic importance of this borderland site.
Medieval fortress and royal fief
A fortress stood in the forest above Žacléř before the present castle was built. Tradition placed its construction in 1136, during the rule of Duke Soběslav I, and said that it was fortified around 1250. The fortress gave its name to the settlement below, which had previously been known as Bornflos or Bernstadt.
Žacléř Castle entered written history in 1334, when King John of Luxembourg and his son Charles, the Margrave and future King Charles IV, pledged it to Berthold von Leipa. A pledge transferred control of property in return for financial or political obligations. From 1346 the castle was a fief of Albrecht von Krenowitz, the burgrave, or ruler’s representative, of Kladsko, a historical county on the Bohemian and Silesian border. Albrecht was required to transfer it to the knights Konrad and Ulrich von Wolffersdorf in 1353.
After 1361, Charles IV transferred the castle, together with the Trutnov fief and the town of Dvůr Králové nad Labem, to Duke Bolko II and his wife Agnes. Following Bolko’s death in 1368, Agnes exercised the lordship. Hans von Seidlitz served as burgrave that year, and Hinko von Seidlitz, the duchess’s huntsman, followed him in 1369. When Agnes died in 1392, the vacant fief reverted to King Wenceslas IV, who probably placed its administration in the hands of Peter von Seidlitz.
Hussite conflict and fifteenth-century pledges
During the Hussite Wars, a series of fifteenth-century religious and political conflicts in Bohemia associated with the followers of Jan Hus, the castle served Catholic Silesians as a base against the Hussites. Hussite forces captured it in 1430.
After 1436, Žacléř was repeatedly pledged. In 1440 it went to Hans von Warnsdorf, a northern Bohemian knight who later became governor of Kladsko. From the castle he repeatedly led armed raids against Silesian towns. Silesian forces acquired and destroyed several castles during these conflicts, but Žacléř survived. In 1447 they transferred it to the brothers Hans, Kunz, and Ulrich Liebenthaler, on the condition that they could enter the castle whenever they wished.
The Liebenthalers were followed by Georg and Christoph Zedwitz, who sold Žacléř to George of Poděbrady, the future King of Bohemia. George transferred it back to Hans von Warnsdorf in 1448, after which it passed to the lords of Schönburg.
Destruction and Renaissance rebuilding
Hermann von Schönburg surrendered the castle in 1521 to the brothers Johann and Wilhelm Kruschina von Lichtenburg because of his debts, while retaining the right to live there. After Hermann was accused of damaging the country, a punitive expedition led by the Bohemian governor Karl von Münsterberg burned the castle in 1523.
In 1534, King Ferdinand I, a Habsburg ruler and King of Bohemia, assigned the castle and lordship of Žacléř to Count Johann von Hardegg. The grant compensated Hardegg for surrendering the County of Kladsko to the Bohemian Crown. Hardegg transferred his claim in the same year to Christoph von Gendorf, the royal chief mining official, who had held the lordship of Vrchlabí since 1533.
Christoph von Gendorf built a new Renaissance castle on the site of the burned fortress in 1555. Renaissance architecture drew on renewed European interest in the forms of classical antiquity. The rebuilding transformed the medieval stronghold into the principal form of the complex that survives today.
War damage and later uses
The castle and lordship passed to the Jesuits of Vienna in 1636. The Jesuits, members of the Catholic Society of Jesus, had the building renovated at the beginning of the eighteenth century after Swedish forces captured and plundered it twice during the Thirty Years’ War, the European conflict fought from 1618 to 1648.
During the War of the Bavarian Succession, an eighteenth-century conflict between Prussia and Austria and their allies, the Prussian army shelled the castle in 1779. Part of the building burned, and repairs followed at the end of the nineteenth century. During that work, Waldemar Hesse added small enclosing walls and battlements in a pseudo-Gothic style that imitated selected medieval Gothic forms.
The castle was plundered and confiscated in 1945. Under the state-owned East Bohemian coal mines, it first became a boarding school and later, from the 1960s, provided workers’ housing and served as a forest school. The town of Žacléř received the property in 1990 and sold it in 1997. After several changes of ownership, it came into the possession of the Prague company Castrum Scheczler s.r.o., then known as Cosy Cottage s.r.o., in 2005.
By 2021, Žacléř Castle was deteriorating and inaccessible. It remains protected as a monument and is listed in the Czech monument register as an important testimony to the architectural and urban development of Žacléř.
Remains
Žacléř Castle stands in a wooded area above Žacléř, on the site occupied by the earlier fortress. The surviving complex is rooted in the Renaissance rebuilding of 1555, while later repairs and additions preserve evidence of repeated damage, renovation, and changing use. The late nineteenth-century enclosing walls and battlements give the castle a later pseudo-Gothic outer character around its Renaissance core.
Renaissance castle and later alterations
Renaissance core
The principal castle complex originated in 1555, when Christoph von Gendorf rebuilt the burned medieval fortress in Renaissance form. This work created the main architectural substance of the present castle. Renovation at the beginning of the eighteenth century followed the Swedish capture and plundering of the building, while the partial fire caused by Prussian shelling in 1779 led to further repairs at the end of the nineteenth century.
Pseudo-Gothic enclosure
During the late nineteenth-century repairs, Waldemar Hesse added small walls and battlements around the castle. These elements were pseudo-Gothic, meaning that they imitated selected Gothic forms such as battlements. Together with the earlier Renaissance building, they express the successive architectural phases through which the castle reached its present form.
By 2021 the castle was in a deteriorating condition and could not be entered. Its surviving fabric nevertheless represents the transition from a medieval fortress to a Renaissance castle, followed by wartime damage, repair, and later architectural embellishment.
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