Kost Castle: A Gothic Fortress and Noble Residence in Czechia
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- High
- Country
- Czechia
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Bohemia
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page21 sections
History
Kost Castle is a Gothic castle in Czechia, near Libošovice in the Český ráj region, founded by the Bohemian nobleman Beneš III of Vartenberk in the first half of the fourteenth century. It became the seat of a succession of noble families and developed from a medieval stronghold into an estate centre whose history reflects the political and military changes of Bohemia.
Foundation and Vartenberk rebuilding
Beneš III was the castle’s builder and first documented owner. By 1349 he had moved his residence from Sobotka to Kost and was using the designation “Beneš of Kost.” In the late 1350s, he appointed a chaplain named Jan to the castle chapel and stated that he resided at Kost. Beneš died in 1358, after which his sons Petr and Markvart held the property jointly until their division of the family lands in 1373.
Petr of Vartenberk retained Kost and undertook a forceful rebuilding campaign during the second half of the fourteenth century. His reconstruction probably reflected his position as a prominent courtier of King Wenceslaus IV. The earlier castle was largely dismantled and replaced by a new complex, with a redirected approach route, a new trapezoidal core, and a dominant fortified residential tower.
The Kunštát and Zajíc lords
After Petr’s death, probably in the second half of 1402, Kost passed through the marriage of his daughter Eliška to Jan of Kunštát and Poděbrady. Jan had died by 1409, and Petr’s widow, Žofie, administered the estate for their underage daughter Škonka until 1414. Škonka probably then married Mikuláš Zajíc of Hazmburk, who was first recorded as lord of Kost on 12 March 1414.
The Zajíc family of Hazmburk, a powerful Bohemian noble lineage, made Kost an important family residence until 1497. During the Hussite Wars, fifteenth-century religious and political conflicts in Bohemia associated with the followers of Jan Hus, the castle served as an important Catholic stronghold. It also sheltered Catholic priests expelled from their parishes. One of them, Ondřej Hrnčíř of Rokycany, lived in the Red Tower and copied biblical manuscripts there.
Mikuláš Zajíc enlarged the estate in 1438 by acquiring Lhotka, Meziluží, Dobšice, and Bystřice. After his death in 1459, his sons Jan and Oldřich held Kost jointly. Both initially supported the election of Jiří of Poděbrady as king, but later joined the opposition Green Mountain League. Royal forces besieged Kost in 1467 and 1469. Jan Zajíc prevented its capture by negotiating truces with the king, while the brothers continued to serve the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus. In 1479, Jan pledged loyalty to King Vladislaus at the Prague St. Wenceslas Assembly.
After Jan Zajíc died in 1495 and his sons Mikuláš and Jan died in 1496 and 1497, respectively, Zdeněk Lev of Rožmitál administered the estate for the underage heir. To meet debts accumulated during the preceding wars, he sold Kost in 1497 to Jan of Šelmberk.
Šelmberk, Biberštejn, and Lobkovic ownership
Jindřich of Šelmberk inherited Kost in 1508 but sold it, together with Trosky Castle, to Jan of Biberštejn to settle the estate’s debts. Jan transferred Kost to his brothers in 1545 and died in 1551. Following the deaths of the relevant Biberštejn heirs, the land registers assigned shares to Anna of Bibrštejn, another Anna of Bibrštejn, and Barbora. In time, inheritance and transfers brought the estate together under Kryštof Popel of Lobkovic.
Under the Lobkovic family, Kost ceased to be the lord’s principal residence and began to deteriorate, although the estate’s economic facilities were expanded. Kryštof Popel of Lobkovic established a brewery in the forecourt in 1576. His successors included Oldřich Felix Popel, Václav Popel, Vilém Popel, Marie Magdaléna Trčková of Lobkovic, and Polyxena of Lobkovic.
War, fire, and the Černín estate
Polyxena sold Kost to Albrecht of Valdštejn in 1632. Valdštejn, also known as Albrecht von Wallenstein, was a major Bohemian military commander and imperial prince during the Thirty Years’ War, the European conflict fought from 1618 to 1648. After his death in 1634, disputes over payment and possession delayed the transfer of the estate. Václav Eusebius Popel of Lobkovic eventually sold Kost to Count Heřman Černín of Chudenice on 7 October 1637.
An Imperial army detachment commanded by Count Colloredo occupied the castle in 1635. During the night of 18 to 19 May, a fire destroyed almost the entire palace wing in the castle core. The stables and two rooms used by clerks survived the blaze. The estate continued to suffer military burdens during the war. On 26 February 1640, a garrison of 25 men, a sergeant, and Lieutenant Jakub Mayerhofer occupied the castle, while the estate administration had to feed six Swedish prisoners. The troops later withdrew toward Prague after Heřman Černín appealed to General Ottavio Piccolomini, with the intercession of Zikmund Jan Myslík of Hyršov.
In 1658, the military engineer Pieroni inspected Kost and judged that it might serve as a fortress for the emperor’s enemies. Demolition was considered, but Sylvie Kateřina Černínová of Millesimo argued that the castle had not functioned as a fortress during the preceding wars, was vulnerable to artillery, and already contained many ruined walls. Prolonged delays eventually brought the demolition proposal to an end.
Kost remained with the Černín family until 1738. It had ceased to serve as the estate’s principal lordly residence about a century earlier, and Humprecht Jan Černín built the nearby Humprecht château instead. In 1738, Václav Kazimír Netolický of Eisenberk acquired the castle and made the estate a fideicommissum, an inheritable arrangement intended to keep property within a designated family line. It passed to his son Jan Adam Netolický in 1760. When Jan Adam died without a male heir in 1769, the inheritance went to his sister Anna Terezie and her husband, Count František Václav Vratislav of Mitrovice.
Nineteenth-century conflict and modern conservation
The estate later passed through Antonín Václav Vratislav Netolický to Evžen Vratislav of Mitrovice. When that family’s male line ended in 1867, an inheritance dispute followed. During the 1870s, Kost passed to the Italian dal Borgo family, which also inherited the Netolický name and comital title.
Kost was involved in the final military action at the castle during the Prusso-Austrian War of 1866. Austrian soldiers occupied it and fought Prussian patrols on 28 and 29 June. They repelled two Prussian attacks before withdrawing toward Austrian forces near Jičín, after which Prussian troops occupied the castle.
Gothicizing conservation in 1874 and 1875 repaired serious damage to the battlements, retaining walls, and the masonry and roof of the Red Tower. The castle was nationalized by the Czechoslovak state in 1945. A fire on 27 September 1946 led to the restoration of the Biberštejn Palace roof, while architectural analysis in 1953 preceded extensive restoration directed by Břetislav Štorm. During the Communist period, a museum of Gothic and Renaissance art operated at Kost.
Restitution in 1992 returned the castle and adjoining land to Giovanni Kinský dal Borgo, heir of his mother Anna Marie dal Borgo-Netolická and a Czech citizen. He later transferred half of the ownership to his brother Pio Kinský dal Borgo, and the property is held through the joint-stock company Kinský dal Borgo. Reconstruction begun in 2019 and completed in 2021 drained the complex, stabilized the walls, underlying ground, and rock mass, repaired the fortifications, and supplemented the plasterwork of the Vartenberk and Šelmberk Palaces. Kost is protected as a cultural monument. Its history and that of the surrounding estate, especially from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, were examined in detail by the Czech historian Josef Pekař in his two-volume Kniha o Kosti.
Two legends offer explanations for the castle’s name. One connects it with an alleged Italian-style signature by Beneš of Vartenberk, “Benesius di Costi.” Another attributes to Jan Žižka the remark that the castle was “hard as a bone.” This second tradition may preserve a memory of a later siege during the Poděbrady wars, when the speaker was a royal commander who was subsequently confused with Žižka.
Remains
Kost occupies a sandstone spur at the meeting point of three rocky, water-bearing valleys: the Svatoprokopské or Prokopské Valley toward Libošovice, the Plakánek Valley, and the Turnovské Valley. Artificial ponds were formed on three sides of the castle. Bílý and Černý ponds survive, while breaching their dams could rapidly turn the surrounding ground into difficult terrain. Partotický Pond lies farther north on a tributary of the Klenice, and the Obora, also called Pilský, lies south in the Plakánek Valley.
Early castle and central fortification
First gate and early towers
The earliest castle phase included a gate, a bergfried, and a small round tower. A bergfried was a principal medieval tower used chiefly for defense and refuge. The presumed enceinte, or enclosing defensive wall, was dismantled during the later rebuilding. The bergfried’s surviving remains lie beneath the present chapel. Its walls were 3.2 metres thick, and its external diameter was 9.9 metres. The smaller round tower stood southeast of it and measured 7.7 metres across.
Fragments of two walls mark the first gate. A building north of the bergfried probably took the form of a tower measuring about 7.5 metres on each side. When the castle was rebuilt, the gate’s outer portal was blocked, while the building continued to serve as a tower for a time.
Northwestern residential tower
The square residential tower in the northwestern corner of the castle core is assigned either to the earliest phase or to the beginning of Petr of Vartenberk’s rebuilding. Constructed from rubble stone, it has three storeys with flat ceilings and a basement room covered by a barrel vault. Its upper storey, distinguished by richly moulded windows, was added or altered at the end of the fourteenth century.
Trapezoidal core and donjon
During the second half of the fourteenth century, the approach route was redirected into a spiral around the rock. The castle core assumed its surviving trapezoidal outline and acquired a dominant five-storey donjon, a major fortified residential tower. A palace was constructed along the western wall and joined by a narrower wing to the older tower at the northwestern corner.
Gates, palaces, and chapels
Red Tower and first gate
The Red Tower projects from the palace as a round corner tower only six metres in diameter. It originally contained the castle chapel. At its base stood the first gate, with a pedestrian wicket gate, and both portals closed with drawbridges spanning a moat. The Red Tower was entered from the ground floor and, at second-floor level, through a pointed portal from the adjoining hall.
The chapel was dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the fourteenth century. Before 1412, its dedication was expanded to include John the Baptist, and by 1424 the earlier Marian dedication was no longer used. The small space in the Red Tower led to the construction of a new chapel in the courtyard. Mikuláš Zajíc of Hazmburk probably commissioned a large fresco bearing the Zajíc family arms. After 1551, the chapel was dedicated to Saint Anne, the patron saint of Anna of Bibrštejn.
Second and third gates
The second gate lies below the northwestern corner of the palace, where a square turret projects from a straight wall. The third gate stands on the northern side of the castle core and leads into the inner courtyard. A kitchen occupied the space opposite the palace, while the northeastern corner held a large chapel with a two-sided apse, the semi-circular or polygonal end of a sanctuary.
Western palace and Šelmberk Palace
The palace opposite the White Tower was largely destroyed when its longitudinal walls collapsed in 1690, after which the building became a granary. Its three basement rooms retain their original barrel vaults. The adjoining square room has a double vault that was originally supported by semicircular arcades converging on a central pillar. Later alterations blocked the arcades. A comparable arrangement may have existed on the raised ground floor, which was converted into a steward’s apartment reached from the courtyard by an external staircase. Fragments of the staircase portico survive.
A narrower wing extended north from the palace. Its surviving raised-ground-floor rooms include a black kitchen and an antechamber. In the sixteenth century, this section was rebuilt as the Šelmberský Palace.
Biberštejn Palace
Jan of Biberštejn enlarged the residential accommodation in 1545 by building the Biberštejn Palace between the first and second gates. A passage over the second gate connected it with the older palace. The building belongs to the sixteenth-century expansion of the castle and, like the structures of that phase below the core, received sgraffito plasterwork. Sgraffito is made by scratching through one layer of plaster to expose a differently coloured layer beneath.
White Tower and outer defenses
White Tower
The large White Tower has an almost regular trapezoidal plan. Its longer side measures 17.6 metres, its shorter side 14 metres, and its width 12 metres. The enclosing walls are 3.2 metres thick. The earliest entrance was at second-floor level and was reached by a gallery from the southern wall.
The lower levels served as grain stores from the beginning. The principal residential space lies beneath the wall crown and is identified externally by large windows. A safe was set into the sloping wall at one corner of this residential floor.
Outer enclosure and service buildings
The southern, eastern, and northern defenses were reinforced by a zwinger, an outer defensive enclosure between walls. Its broader section before the third gate probably contained service buildings. A long building for estate officials stood below the White Tower, and a late Gothic house for officials was built at its foot in the sixteenth century. The latter was converted into a carriage shed in 1875.
A brewery was constructed below the castle in the second half of the sixteenth century. The newly enclosed area had gates toward Sobotka and Turnov. The gate near the White Pond was demolished in the mid-nineteenth century, and a statue of Saint John of Nepomuk was placed on its site. The long official building and the Biberštejn Palace received sgraffito plasterwork.
Sala terrena
Albrecht of Valdštejn planned to transform Kost into one of the principal fortresses of his estate. The completed result was a Baroque sala terrena, a ground-level recreational pavilion, at the foot of the White Tower. During the 1874 to 1875 conservation campaign, the economic buildings on the third courtyard were demolished, and the sala terrena was adapted for carriage storage.
Restored fabric
The battlements and retaining walls bear the results of the nineteenth-century conservation campaign, while the Red Tower retains repaired masonry and roofing from the same period. The Biberštejn Palace roof was restored after the 1946 fire. Later interventions stabilized the surviving walls, the ground beneath the complex, its fortifications, and the sandstone rock mass. Work completed between 2019 and 2021 also addressed the plasterwork of the Vartenberk and Šelmberk Palaces.
