Kozel Chateau

Kozel was built between 1784 and 1789 for Count Jan Vojtech Cernin as a hunting lodge to designs by Vaclav Haberditz - a low single-storey block round a square courtyard, restrained and symmetrical, with a chapel, riding hall and stables added by Ignac Palliardi shortly after. What distinguishes it is that nothing much happened to it afterwards: no nineteenth-century remodelling, no rebuilding, so the interiors are the original classicist scheme with their furniture, stoves, wallpapers and paintings in place, which makes it one of the more coherent late-eighteenth-century interiors in the country. The riding hall is used for concerts and the stables hold carriages. Around it lies an English landscape park of about forty hectares with old oaks and a network of rides, laid out with the house and largely intact.

History

Kozel was built in 1784-1789 under the architect Václav Haberditz as the summer and hunting seat of Count Jan Vojtěch Černín of Chudenice, chief master of the hunt of the Kingdom of Bohemia at the court of Joseph II: a ground-floor rectangular building around an inner courtyard. In the 1790s four more buildings were added to the complex, a riding hall, a chapel, a servants' house and stables, designed by Ignác Palliardi, and the sculpture, including the chapel altar and the figure of a felled stag on the terrace, is by Ignác Platzer the younger (1757-1826). Černín, who died in 1816, had no male heir and left his estates to his great-nephew Kristián Vincenc Valdštejn, whose family managed Kozel until 1945 (Czech Wikipedia, Kozel).

What's there

• A single-storey classicist block - built 1784-1789 around a square courtyard.
• Original interiors - furniture, stoves, wallpapers and paintings as installed.
• A riding hall and stables - with a carriage collection, used for concerts.
• A forty-hectare English park - old oaks and rides laid out with the house.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Good to know

Guided tours only, seasonal, closed in winter. Several routes with separate tickets. The house is modest in scale - the appeal is coherence, not grandeur. Concerts close the riding hall.

Nearby

Plzen and its brewery are fifteen kilometres north-west.

Key facts