Blatna Castle

Blatna is a water castle - built on marshy ground and ringed by a broad moat fed by the Lomnice, so it stands on what is effectively an island reached by a bridge. The core is Gothic of the fourteenth century with a palace wing added in 1508 to designs by Benedikt Ried, who built the Vladislav Hall in Prague; the Rozmital wing carries his characteristic window and vault detailing. Later owners added Renaissance and neo-Gothic work. Inside are furnished rooms with family portraits and collections. The park around the moat, about forty hectares laid out in the English manner in the nineteenth century, holds a herd of fallow deer that are entirely habituated to people and will approach for food, which is what most families come for and which the castle sells feed pellets to support. There are old oaks and a network of water channels.

History

Blatná is first mentioned in 1235, as a fortress and the seat of Vyšemír, linked with the Bavor family of Strakonice; by 1241 it was a castle, with ties to the Knights Hospitaller, and the Bavors replaced the wooden fort with a stone residence, a Romanesque chapel and the moat. When their male line died out in 1403 it passed to their relatives, the Rožmitáls; Jan of Rožmitál rebuilt it as a Gothic residence with its fortified entrance tower and held it through the Hussite wars. His son Jaroslav Lev of Rožmitál, later Lord Chamberlain of Bohemia, led a journey of forty Bohemian nobles round the courts of Europe in 1465-1467, and added a Gothic chapel and a study at the top of the tower painted with frescoes, some of which survive. In 1508 his son Zdeněk Lev had the royal architect Benedikt Rejt, builder of the Vladislav Hall in Prague, add a three-storey Renaissance wing; in 1555 Zdeněk's grandson, burdened with debts, had to sell the castle and the whole town, and it later passed to the Rozdražov family, who built the last Renaissance palace on the site (Wikipedia, Blatná Castle).

Highlights

• A moated island castle - reached by a bridge across water on all sides.
• Benedikt Ried's wing - late Gothic detailing by the Vladislav Hall architect.
• Furnished rooms - portraits and family collections inside.
• Habituated fallow deer - in the forty-hectare English park around the moat.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

What to expect

Interiors are guided and seasonal. The deer are tame enough to crowd visitors - feeding is only with the pellets sold on site. The park gets busy on warm weekends.

Nearby

Strakonice is south; Pisek is east.

Key facts