Lednice Castle

The castle sits beside the Dyje River within an English‑style park laid out in the 19th century, where avenues and long sightlines connect the palace to its landscape.

A straight avenue about seven kilometres long aligns the site toward Valtice Castle.

In order to shape ponds, islands and raised garden ground, the riverbed was redirected and new water areas were formed, producing the large parkland around the palace.

The castle pond and the adjacent Lednické rybníky form a water complex that was declared a national nature reserve in 1953.

The park contains a rich arboreal collection, recorded as comprising 614 different tree and shrub varieties.

Many constructed landscape features survive within the grounds, including designed vistas and a sequence of picturesque staffage buildings that punctuate walkways and clearings.

The Palm Greenhouse, built between 1843 and 1848, is a monumental glasshouse roughly 92 metres long, 13 metres wide and 10 metres high, and it shelters tropical and subtropical plants such as fruiting date and banana palms.

It was physically attached to the main palace to form an extensive covered winter garden.

The Palm Greenhouse remains a prominent glazed structure directly connected to the residence.

One of the oldest preserved parts of the complex is the stables and the riding hall, a large service block begun in the Baroque rebuilding after the Thirty Years’ War and associated with work by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and later completion by another architect.

These service buildings survive as substantial masonry ranges that originally housed horses and an indoor riding arena.

The main building preserves the palimpsest of its development: medieval foundations gave way to a 16th‑century Renaissance plan, later Baroque remodelling and, finally, mid‑19th‑century neo‑Gothic façades.

During the 1800s the exterior received Gothicizing additions — balconies, pointed and round arches, towers and decorative tracery — while much of the earlier Baroque masonry remained at core.

Interior fittings from the 19th century include a spiral staircase carved from a single oak tree dated 1851 and period heating and bathroom installations that provided hot air and running hot water.

Ground‑floor representative rooms are arranged in suites that reflect the princely household’s layout.

These include an entrance vestibule and a sequence of salons and chambers described as the hunting salon, Blue Room, ladies’ bedroom, Chinese Room, Knights’ Hall, dining room, library, turquoise reception hall, red smoking salon and blue dance hall.

Princely apartments occupy the upper floors and were used as family living quarters until 1945.

The park contains a collection of follies and ancillary buildings executed across the late 18th and 19th centuries.

Notable examples include a Roman‑style aqueduct with a grotto, a building identified as the New Bathhouse, a small Musen Temple, a Minaret completed in 1804 and a pavilion called the Hansenburg finished in 1808.

A late‑18th‑century Chinese pavilion is recorded for 1795 but was taken down in 1882.

These structures survive in varying states and remain legible as elements of the designed landscape.