Bezdez Castle

Bezdez was built between 1264 and 1278 for Premysl Otakar II on a basalt cone of 604 metres rising out of the flat sandstone country, and it matters because almost nothing was done to it afterwards: it was a royal castle designed as a whole and never remodelled into a residence, so the surviving fabric is a single coherent thirteenth-century design. The chapel is the finest part, an early Gothic room with a ribbed vault, engaged columns and window tracery of court quality, essentially intact. There are two towers and a long palace along the ridge. The young Wenceslas II was imprisoned here as a child. It was besieged in the Thirty Years War and abandoned. Karel Hynek Macha climbed it repeatedly and it runs through his writing and through Czech Romantic painting. The approach is a steady forty-five minutes on foot with the last section steep.

What you actually see

• A single-phase royal castle - built 1264-1278 and never remodelled.
• An intact early Gothic chapel - ribbed vault and tracery of court quality.
• A volcanic cone at 604 metres - standing alone above flat sandstone country.
• Macha's mountain - central to Czech Romantic writing and painting.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Honest expectations

There is no vehicle access - it is forty-five minutes up on foot, steep at the end. Roofless throughout. Seasonal opening and it closes in bad weather. No facilities on top.

Nearby

Lake Macha is below; Houska castle is south.