A complete interior
Furniture, library, arms and a kitchen with all its vessels, everything in place.
Prazak — CC BY 2.5 · Hadonos — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Petr1888 — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Rudolf von Alt — Public domain
After 1948 the communist regime nationalised aristocratic property, and rather than selling the contents many houses passed to state administration as museums with their furniture intact. The result was unintended but real: the Czech Republic today holds some of the most complete preserved aristocratic interiors in Europe, while the contents of their equivalents elsewhere were sold off piecemeal.
Yes, and that is the best use of the day. Kutná Hora is about twenty kilometres away: St Barbara's Cathedral and the ossuary in the morning, then Žleby in the afternoon. Easy by car; by public transport it needs planning, as the local buses are infrequent.
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A château in eastern Bohemia near Kutná Hora, originally a thirteenth-century castle rebuilt in the nineteenth century in the romantic neo-Gothic manner. The nineteenth century was Europe's age of romantic Gothic: aristocrats wanted their houses to look like medieval castles, and rebuilt them with towers, crenellations and armouries. Žleby is among the purest Czech examples, executed with great care by the Auersperg family. What distinguishes it is that the interior survives complete: furniture, carpets, a library, an arms collection and a historic kitchen with all its vessels, everything in place as it was left. The few châteaux that came through the post-1948 nationalisation fully furnished are rare, and this is one. The surrounding park holds a birds-of-prey sanctuary and a small zoo. Access is by car, or by train to Čáslav then bus. Hours are seasonal.
Furniture, library, arms and a kitchen with all its vessels, everything in place.
In the surrounding park, with a small zoo and timed displays.
Close by, and the two combine in one day by car.
Žleby, near Kutná Hora, about eighty kilometres east of Prague