Kynzvart Chateau

Kynzvart was rebuilt between 1820 and 1839 for Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian chancellor who ran European diplomacy after 1815, to designs by Pietro Nobile in a restrained Empire manner, and he used it as his country retreat. What makes it worth the trip is what he put in it. The library runs to about twenty-four thousand volumes with manuscripts and incunabula. The museum room is a genuine nineteenth-century cabinet of curiosities, assembled by Metternich and his son: Egyptian antiquities including a mummy and coffins, ethnographic material, natural history specimens, autographs of Napoleon, Goethe and Beethoven, and oddities collected for their strangeness. Very few such cabinets survive intact anywhere. There is a portrait gallery and state rooms. The park around, laid out in the English manner, runs to about two hundred and fifty hectares.

What you actually see

• Metternich's library - about twenty-four thousand volumes with manuscripts.
• An intact cabinet of curiosities - Egyptian material, a mummy, and collected oddities.
• Autographs - Napoleon, Goethe and Beethoven among the papers.
• A 250-hectare English park - laid out around the Empire-style house.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Guided tours only, seasonal, on several routes with separate tickets. Closed Mondays. Photography inside is restricted. The Egyptian human remains are displayed frankly and some visitors find that uncomfortable.

Nearby

Marianske Lazne is eight kilometres east; Becov is north.