Opocno Castle

Opocno was rebuilt between 1560 and 1567 for Vilem Trcka of Lipa into a Renaissance chateau around a courtyard with three storeys of open arcades on slender columns - an Italian arrangement carried out at unusual height, and the best example of it in eastern Bohemia. It passed to the Colloredo-Mansfeld family in 1636 and stayed with them, which is why the collections are what they are: a large armoury with European and Oriental weapons, a picture gallery with Italian and Dutch work, and an ethnographic collection of American material brought back by Josef Colloredo-Mansfeld from travels in the nineteenth century, which is one of the older such collections in the country. The park behind drops in terraces to a lake with a Chinese pavilion.

History

Cosmas of Prague first mentions Opočno in 1068 as a fortified settlement, and a Gothic castle was later built on the site; East Bohemian Hussites took it in 1425, and the round Well Tower is the only part of the medieval castle still standing. The Trčka of Lípa family bought the domain in 1495, and Vilém Trčka of Lípa, who travelled to Italy in 1551, rebuilt the palace in Renaissance style in 1560-67 with arcades after Italian models and turned the chapel of St Andrew into the Church of the Holy Trinity, planned as the family burial place; in 1602 Jan Rudolf Trčka built a summer pavilion over the valley of the Zlatý potok and laid out a garden around it. After the Trčka male line died out in 1634, Opočno was confiscated and Emperor Ferdinand II allowed the Colloredo family to buy it for 51,456 Rhenish guilders. After a fire in the 1690s Hieronymous Colloredo had the palace, above all its southern wing, reconstructed, with the architect Giovanni Battista Alliprandi, and the chapel of St Anne took its present form; the Colloredos later laid out a 22-hectare English garden with rare trees, ponds and waterfalls, and in 1895 brought the large family picture gallery here from Prague (Wikipedia, Opočno Castle).

What's there

• Three storeys of arcades - an unusually tall Renaissance courtyard of the 1560s.
• A large armoury - European and Oriental weapons across several rooms.
• An American ethnographic collection - gathered on nineteenth-century travels.
• A terraced park - dropping to a lake with a Chinese pavilion.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Good to know

Guided tours only, seasonal, with routes that vary. Ownership disputes have closed it in the past - check it is open before travelling. The town is small.

Nearby

Hradec Kralove is south-west; the Orlicke hory rise east.

Key facts