Nelahozeves Castle

Nelahozeves was begun in 1553 for Florian Griespek of Griespach as a Renaissance castle above the Vltava, its facades covered in diamond-point sgraffito, and it passed to the Lobkowicz family in the seventeenth century. It is theirs again after restitution and it holds a substantial part of their collection - one of the largest private art holdings in Central Europe, with paintings by Cranach, Brueghel the Elder, Velazquez and Canaletto, along with arms, ceramics and a very important music archive containing manuscripts annotated by Beethoven and original parts for works the family commissioned. In the village below stands the small house where Antonin Dvorak was born in 1841, now a museum with his family's rooms and material on his early life. The two together make the visit: a magnate collection and a butcher's son's birthplace a few hundred metres apart.

What you actually see

• Diamond-point sgraffito - covering the Renaissance facades of the 1550s.
• The Lobkowicz collection - Cranach, Brueghel, Velazquez and Canaletto among it.
• A music archive - manuscripts annotated by Beethoven, and commissioned parts.
• Dvorak's birthplace - the small house in the village, now a museum.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Honest expectations

The castle and the Dvorak house are separate tickets and separate opening hours; the birthplace closes on Mondays and Tuesdays. Parts of the collection rotate to Prague. The village is small.

Nearby

Veltrusy chateau is downstream; Melnik is north.