A genuine architectural puzzle
Nobody knows with certainty why it was built in this particular place.
Mirek256 — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Ben Skála, Benfoto — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ben Skála, Benfoto — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ben Skála, Benfoto — CC BY-SA 4.0
No, of course not. But the question it grew from is real: why build an expensive castle on a site with no strategic value and no water, with its fortifications facing inward? The likelier history is a regional administrative centre, perhaps a prison or a treasury. It was the puzzle that made the story.
By car, about an hour north of Prague, which is effectively the only practical way. By public transport it is a train then a bus then a walk, taking half a day each way. With a hire car it combines with the Kokořínsko rock country or the nearby Mácha Lake.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.
A thirteenth-century Gothic castle on a sandstone rock in forest north of Prague, built by Ottokar II, King of Bohemia. What makes it unusual is a genuine architectural question: the castle guards no road, no border and no water source, it had no well, and its fortifications face inward more than outward. Nobody knows with certainty why it was built here. Out of that puzzle grew the best-known Czech legend: that the castle was raised to seal a hole in the ground leading to hell, and that the chapel inside was built directly over the opening. The likelier history is that it was a regional administrative seat in unsettled country, with the inward fortification protecting prisoners or treasuries. The legend is better known than the explanation. The chapel holds fourteenth-century wall paintings, among the oldest surviving in Bohemia. Visits are by guided tour, and the site is isolated in forest and needs a car in practice.
Nobody knows with certainty why it was built in this particular place.
In the chapel, among the oldest surviving in Bohemia.
The gate-to-hell story is far better known than the likelier history.
Near Doksy, about fifty kilometres north of Prague