Benešov nad Ploučnicí Castle: A Saxon Renaissance Castle Complex
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Czechia
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page9 sections
History
Benešov nad Ploučnicí Castle is a sixteenth-century castle complex in Czechia, developed in late Gothic and Renaissance styles. The town of Benešov nad Ploučnicí is first documented in the mid-fourteenth century, while the history of the castle begins in the following century. The complex later became one of the important examples of Saxon Renaissance architecture in Bohemia.
Early owners and the Salhausen period
The earliest recorded owners of the fortress were members of the Markvartic family. The Michalics, the Vartenbergs, and the Trčka family of Lípa followed them in possession. In 1515, the Salhausen family of Meissen acquired the castle, beginning the period in which the complex underwent its greatest development.
Friedrich von Salhausen, a Protestant nobleman and member of the Salhausen family, commissioned the Upper Castle in 1522–1524. From the middle of the sixteenth century, the Upper and Lower Castles were held separately. Palaces belonging to the Lower Castle were constructed between 1540 and 1578, and the building was rebuilt in late Gothic and Renaissance forms. About a century later, the fortress was transformed into a late Gothic castle and served as a summer residence.
Seventeenth-century transfers and later ownership
The Lower Castle passed to Wilhelm Kinsky von Wchinitz and Tettau. In 1634, he was murdered together with Wallenstein, the Bohemian nobleman and military commander Albrecht von Wallenstein, during the Thirty Years’ War, the major European conflict of the seventeenth century. Wilhelm Kinsky’s property was confiscated, and the Lower Castle passed to Johann von Aldringen, an imperial general in the Habsburg armies. The Upper Castle passed to Christoph Simon von Thun.
The Thun and Aldringen families used the two castles as summer residences and provided housing there for estate administrators and foresters until 1856. The Lower Castle later came into the possession of the Grohmann family, textile industrialists. The two buildings continued to be held separately through inheritance.
State ownership and restoration
After 1945, the complex became Czechoslovak property and deteriorated. It was made a state castle in 1961, after which restoration and reconstruction work began. A severe fire damaged the castle in 1969 and required further restoration. The Upper Castle was reconstructed in the late 1990s. The complex is protected in the Czech Republic as a cultural monument under catalogue number 1000146832.
Remains
The surviving complex consists of two independent buildings, the Upper Castle and the Lower Castle. Together they preserve a mixture of late Gothic and Renaissance architecture, including forms associated with the Saxon Renaissance, an architectural tradition that developed in Saxony and influenced buildings in Bohemia during the sixteenth century.
The castle buildings
Upper Castle
The Upper Castle includes an associated octagonal tower. Construction of the tower began with the Upper Castle in the sixteenth century and continued until its completion in the seventeenth century. The building was reconstructed in the late twentieth century and remains without interior furnishings.
Lower Castle
The Lower Castle is formed by the Johann or Anton Wing, the Wolf Wing, and the Czernin Wing. The Czernin Wing was newly built between 1877 and 1888. The Wolf Wing displays Saxon Renaissance features, including a gabled roof, Renaissance gables, and a tower projecting toward the courtyard. Inside the Lower Castle are vaulted ground-floor spaces and rooms with beam ceilings, as well as a black kitchen, a traditional hearth kitchen in which smoke escaped directly into the room or through the roof and darkened the interior with soot. Residential rooms belonging to the aristocratic owners also survive.
Collections and courtyard sculpture
The castles contain exhibitions and collections of period furniture, porcelain, weapons, paintings, graphic works, and artistic handicrafts. These materials illustrate the life of the local lesser nobility during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
A copy of a Triton statue by Adriaen de Vries stands in the courtyard. De Vries was a Dutch Mannerist sculptor known for bronze and mythological works, including representations of Triton.
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