HISTORY OF NELAHOZEVES CASTLE
The monumental castle of Nelahozeves, one of Bohemia’s finest Renaissance castles, is located in a small village of the same name, approximately 15 miles north of Prague on the Vltava (Moldau) river, known also as the birthplace of the great Czech composer, Antonín Dvořák.
Nelahozeves is an example of the castello fortezza, a style deemed very modern around 1550. The castle’s builder, Florian Griesbeck von Griesbach (1504–1588), most likely employed the royal master builder, Bonifaz Wolmut, to build his Italianate Northern Mannerist castle.
A highly educated Tyrolean aristocrat, Florian Griesbeck served as private secretary and close adviser to Emperor Ferdinand I. Florian amassed great wealth and in 1544 bought the village of Nelahozeves.
Florian’s ambitious new residence, which took 60 years to build, was planned as a two-story building with four wings and four corner pavilions looking like spur-shaped bastions. The facade’s sgraffito decorations are beautifully restored on the north wing, showing scenes from ancient mythology and the Old Testament.
Of the castle interiors, the most noteworthy are the south facing Arcade Hall on the first floor and a magnificent room with a very well-preserved Renaissance interior dating back to 1564. Known as the Knight’s Hall, it is decorated with frescoes of larger-than-life military figures. The room features a lunette vault that has a center panel with nine sections, separated by stucco fruit festoons, along with other stucco reliefs depicting delicate elongated figures. The ceiling’s theme is Titus Livius’ description of the five examples of Roman virtues and the room is dominated by the huge stone Renaissance fireplace.
When Florian Griesbeck died in 1588, his son Blažej inherited the castle and construction continued until the beginning of the 17th century. In 1623 the family’s financial difficulties forced Florian’s granddaughter to sell the encumbered estate to Princess Polyxena Lobkowicz, whose family have owned the castle ever since.
During the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) the castle was ransacked several times. Following the war, Polyxena’s son, Prince Václav Eusebius Lobkowicz, High Chancellor of the Czech Kingdom, did reconstruction work and used it for the administration of his properties. The castle’s original and authentic appearance is due to limited structural changes being undertaken over the centuries.
Since the second half of the 1960’s, the exterior of the castle was maintained and during the late 1970’s and 80’s, the Czech Regional Gallery used Nelahozeves Castle to house modern "socialist" art, as well as some of the Lobkowicz painting collections.
The castle was returned to the Lobkowicz family in 1993 and a temporary exhibition was immediately opened. From 1997-2007, a permanent exhibition (Six Centuries of European Art Patronage) featured some of the most significant private art in Europe. From 2007, when elements of the collections were transferred to the family’s Lobkowicz Palace in Prague Castle for public display, Nelahozeves was re-installed with historical period rooms depicting the lifestyle and objects with which different Lobkowicz Princes and Princesses lived through the centuries – in a permanent exhibition entitled “Private Spaces: A Noble Family at Home.”