History of Roudnice Castle

In the 12th century, on the site where Roudnice Castle now sits, a fortress-style castle was built by the powerful bishops and archbishops of Prague, serving as their popular summer residence. Its early foundations make it one of the oldest stone castles in Bohemia.

Gothic additions and alterations were made to the original Romanesque structure in the 14th and 15th centuries. The castle changed from religious to secular hands and eventually came into the Lobkowicz family in 1603, when Zdenko Adalbert Popel, 1st Prince Lobkowicz (1568–1628), married then-owner of the castle, Polyxena, née Pernstein (1566–1642). In 1652, their son Wenzel Eusebius, 2nd Prince Lobkowicz (1609–1677), commissioned Italian architects Francesco Caratti and later Antonio della Porta to demolish most of the original structure and create in its place a masterpiece of Central European Early Baroque style. This grand over 200-room residence included massive twin entry staircases, a stately clock tower, an elaborately decorated chapel, and an elegant theater. Other outdoor buildings, such as the riding stables and the family administrative building, were further developed on the castle grounds. Wenzel Eusebius’ reconstruction also included the creation of magnificent formal gardens in the Castle courtyard and on the surrounding grounds. When construction of the castle was completed, the rooms were filled with works from the family’s growing art collections, and Library & Archives. Musical compositions were often performed by the house orchestra in the Castle’s theater.

With the onset of World War II, the Lobkowicz family was forced to flee their main residence of Roudnice Castle, and the country. Maximilian Lobkowicz (1888–1967), the Ambassador of Czechoslovakia to Great Britain, and his wife, Gillian Somerville, lived in exile in London. Nazi troops occupied the castle and confiscated the collections, using the building as a Nazi training school. The library spaces housed in the castle were desecrated and turned into communal washrooms. In the final days of the war, bombs fell and severely damaged the theater in the castle’s west wing. In 1945, Maximilian returned home and initiated repairs to the damaged castle. Not long after, when the Communist government seized power in 1948, all Lobkowicz properties and possessions were confiscated for a second time. The contents of the collections were evacuated from the castle and scattered across the country. The greatest treasures were absorbed by the national libraries and museums.

For the next 50 years, Roudnice Castle was used as a military music school and as administrative offices. In 1965, the Riding Hall became home to the Gallery of Modern Art Roudnice nad Labem, which remains there today. The castle was returned to the Lobkowicz family during restitution in the early 1990s. Initially, the family continued to rent the castle to the military music school, all the while using rental and other income to initiate improvements—restoring the bell tower and replacing the roof. The school closed in 2008. Since 2009, the Lobkowicz family has undertaken a series of repairs to the castle, which serves as a venue for guided tours, concerts, festivals, gastronomy, theatrical productions, films, and the Zámek Lobkowicz Roudnice winery.