Postoloprty Castle: A Baroque Palace in Czechia
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 3.9
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Czechia
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Bohemia
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page9 sections
History
Postoloprty Castle in Postoloprty, Czechia, is a Baroque palace whose origins lie in a castle built during the first half of the sixteenth century. It stands on the site of a former Benedictine monastery, a religious community organized according to the Rule of Saint Benedict. The monastery and the village were first mentioned in historical documents in 1125.
The Weitmühl castle
During the first half of the sixteenth century, Sebastian von Weitmühl, who lived from 1490 to 1549, became lord of Postoloprty and built a castle in the village. The residence is first documented around 1550, when Sebastian’s estate was divided between his sons. It passed to his son Christian von Weitmühl and later to Jan Beneš von Weitmühl of Postelberg.
After Jan Beneš’s death, the estate passed to the humanist scholar Jan Vavřinec. He established an art collection and library at Postoloprty. Following his death in Italy in 1584, his wife, Eliška of Zierotin, administered the estate. Their daughter Veronika, the last Weitmühl owner, sold Postoloprty in 1600 to her husband, Stephan Georg of Sternberg, for 42,000 Meissen groschen, a silver coin used in the region during the early modern period.
The Sternberg rebuilding
In 1611, Stephan Georg of Sternberg commissioned a new Baroque palace because the older castle was considered inadequate. The project was soon affected by the upheavals of the Thirty Years’ War, the prolonged European conflict that began in 1618 over political and religious divisions. In 1620, a peasant army attacked the military camp of Ernst von Mansfeld at Postoloprty and plundered the castle. Stephan Georg had already moved to Louny with his servants and valuables. The attackers killed about 350 soldiers, wounded Captain Goldstein, and destroyed the library and archive.
Stephan Georg died in 1625. Five years later, his sons divided the estate. Jan Rudolf von Sternberg received the town, while Adam Jan received the surrounding villages, although each retained half of the castle. When Adam Jan died in 1633, his share passed to his brother, who sold the entire estate to Václav Michna of Vacínov four years later.
The Sinzendorf and Schwarzenberg periods
Václav Michna’s nephew, Zikmund Norbert, inherited the estate in 1667. He died two years later after placing it under a heavy burden of debt. In 1669, Georg Ludwig von Sinzendorf bought the indebted estate for 240,000 Rhine guilders, a historical European currency, and began restoring it. After his death in 1681, Postoloprty passed to his elder son, Christian Ludwig von Sinzendorf, who died in battle against the Turks in 1687. His younger brother, Philipp von Sinzendorf, sold the estate in 1692 for 600,000 Rhine guilders to Prince Ferdinand of Schwarzenberg.
The Schwarzenbergs were a princely noble family whose estates included major residences and landed properties in Bohemia. When Ferdinand acquired Postoloprty, the castle was dilapidated, contained only essential furniture, and was being used for drying hops. He ordered its remodelling between 1706 and 1718, following designs by Pavel Ignác Bayer. During the 1720s, the Viennese architect Gabriel de Gabrieli also took part in the rebuilding and the design of the gardens.
The castle suffered during the Seven Years’ War, the European conflict fought from 1756 to 1763, when the presence of troops damaged the residence. It burned in 1768, and Johann I of Schwarzenberg immediately ordered repairs. Prussian soldiers later damaged the unfinished building during the War of the Bavarian Succession, a conflict from 1778 to 1779 between Prussia and Austria over the Bavarian inheritance. Reconstruction was not completed until 1790. The Schwarzenberg princes frequently stayed at Postoloprty alongside their principal residences at Český Krumlov and Hluboká.
War, confiscation, and recent ownership
Prince Adolph Schwarzenberg was an outspoken opponent of the Nazi regime. During the Second World War, he fled to the United States, while the German Reich confiscated the properties within its reach. His adoptive son and nephew, Prince Henry of Schwarzenberg, was imprisoned in several police prisons and later in Buchenwald concentration camp. Released in 1944, he spent the rest of the war as a forced labourer.
After the war, the Czechoslovak government prevented Adolph Schwarzenberg from returning and sought to confiscate his properties under the 1945 Beneš decrees. These postwar presidential decrees addressed property confiscation and the legal status of people associated with Nazi Germany and other designated groups. A separate law drafted in 1947, later known as Lex Schwarzenberg, confiscated all of Adolph Schwarzenberg’s estates, including Postoloprty Castle. The measure was controversial because it was directed at one individual, but it came into force after Czechoslovakia became communist.
During the second half of the twentieth century, the castle housed a depository of the State Library of the Czechoslovak Republic in Prague. After the fall of communism, Elisabeth von Pezold, Prince Henry’s daughter, sought to recover the property, but Czech courts rejected her claims in January 2015.
The Czech government sold the castle in 2004 to the Italian businessman Mauro Piccinini. Legal disputes initially prevented investment, and an unsuccessful attempt to resell the property was followed by severe deterioration. Legal proceedings began in 2018 over the dilapidated condition of the castle and two other properties owned by Piccinini, and he ultimately received a suspended prison sentence. In October 2021, the town of Postoloprty purchased the castle for 13.2 million Czech korunas. The building is recognized as a cultural monument.
Remains
Architectural development
Early castle and square tower
The early-seventeenth-century castle had four wings covered by a tile roof. During Georg Ludwig von Sinzendorf’s renovations in 1680, a square tower designed by Jiří Pach of Wiesenthal was added. A description from 1739 states that the tower had three floors, a clock with dials on all four sides, and a gateway at ground level leading into the courtyard. By that time, a storm had torn off its roof.
During the reconstruction of the second half of the eighteenth century, the northern wing facing the square and the square tower were demolished. Johan Schmidt prepared a reconstruction design, but it was not carried out. Instead, the work followed a more economical design by Andreas Zach.
Surviving palace
The present complex consists of three surviving two-story wings arranged around a courtyard. A wrought-iron fence separates the courtyard from the town. On the courtyard side of the central wing, pillar arcades occupy the ground level, while pavilion extensions emphasize the corners. A pavilion stands at the end of the wing, and a neoclassical gate occupies its centre.
The palace is Baroque in style, with the later gate introducing neoclassical architecture, a style based on the forms and proportions of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. The surviving complex is in poor and increasingly alarming condition.
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