Nelahozeves Chateau

Nelahozeves Chateau, Nelahozeves, Czechia, is a 16th-century late‑Renaissance estate begun by the Bohemian noble Florian Griespek von Griespach, who served as an adviser to King Ferdinand I. Built on a rocky promontory above the Vltava River about 25 kilometres north of Prague, the house ranks among Bohemia’s leading late‑Renaissance buildings and was founded in part because of its proximity to the royal residence in Prague.

Work on the three‑winged complex began in 1553 after Florian Griespek had acquired the village and surrounding lands in 1544. Construction paused when Florian died in 1588; his son Blasius took charge of building activity and carried the project forward until about 1614.

In 1623 a niece of the founding family sold the estate to Polyxena of Lobkowicz, and the property thereafter belonged to the Lobkowicz family for most of the following centuries. During the Thirty Years’ War the château suffered repeated attacks by marauding troops and was heavily damaged; after the conflict Polyxena’s son, Prince Wenzel Eusebius of Lobkowicz, set in hand a programme of rebuilding to repair the wartime destruction.

Repairs of a modest character were carried out in the 1860s, and a late‑19th‑century proposal to remodel the building in a Neo‑Renaissance fashion was drawn up in 1876 but never realised. The state expropriated the château and its contents in 1950. In 1993 the estates and collections were returned to the princely House of Lobkowicz; as of 2006 the owner listed for the property was William of Lobkowicz. From 1997 the château began to display items from the family’s private holdings in a permanent exhibition inaugurated by Václav Havel.

The Lobkowicz Library at the château grew from the book collection of Bohuslav Felix of Lobkowicz and Hassenstein and is one of the major private libraries of historic Bohemia, containing roughly 65,000 volumes. Its most prized single manuscript is a likely South‑English Gospel book from the tenth century. The library also preserves a music archive of about 4,000 items, including manuscripts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven; Joseph Franz Maximilian, the seventh Prince Lobkowicz, was an important patron of Beethoven, who dedicated parts of his work to the family. The picture holdings form the most valuable segment of the collection and include paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder; Pieter Brueghel the Elder (The Hay Harvest, 1565) and Pieter Brueghel the Younger; Paolo Veronese; Peter Paul Rubens (The Goddess Hygieia, 1615); Diego Velázquez (Portrait of the Infanta Margaret, 1653); and Bernardo Bellotto, together with late 16th‑ to early 17th‑century Spanish portraits and portraiture of Habsburg nobles.