About an hour’s drive from Prague, you can discover the grandly named Mnichovo Hradiště castle. I say “grandly named” because it is nothing more than a mansion rather than a castle.

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Don’t misunderstand me – the place is beautiful. But instead of turrets, moats and drawbridges you see an impressive stately home set in pleasant and quiet gardens.

As the gravel crunched underfoot, I slowly walked towards the main building. The estate is next to the centre of the town of the same name and the visitors’ car park leads you past the church of St Anne first. This is now an art museum containing statues and gargoyles that are better protected from the elements indoors. The gardens are well maintained making this short walk a pleasant one.

The next building I saw was the old stables which they’ve converted into a small theatre for a marionette group. Judging by the young audience’s rapt gazes, the show was a good one.

A quick glance at the 17th century mansion’s website shows that my initial impression wasn’t wrong. It lasted 200 years before the Wallenstein family felt that a mere “mansion” wasn’t enough for their social status. So they started referring to it as a “castle”¹.

They clearly had a big enough ego to match the mansion. In fairness, he was the Supreme Commander of the Hapsburg forces during the Thirty Years War², so maybe I’m being unkind.

I wrote about the Siege of Brno which was part of this war.

There are regular tours that take you round the densely decorated interior. They have information in various languages too. The detailed frescos and wall paintings are impressive. My only complaint is that every room is packed with few surfaces uncovered, which gives the impression of cramming too much into too small a space. The tour only showed us the first floor out of three and I wonder if there would be a better way to spread the tour across more of the building.

My curiosity was piqued by a fair amount of masonic imagery in family portraits. I’ve written about this sort of imagery before. Seeing symbols used so openly confirms my hypothesis that masonic imagery over the past 300 years is intentional.

I wasn’t as impressed as I had hoped to be. Having said that, if you’re a fan of eighteenth and nineteenth century art, including porcelain, Delft ceramic and Italian frescoes, the place is worth a visit.

Have you had high expectations when visiting stately homes? I’d love to hear from you – leave a comment below!

References

1. Mnichovo Hradiště, mnichovo-hradiste.cz, Retrieved 2017-07-24 (Site in Czech) [↩]
2. The Thirty Years War; Antoine P. Borg; The Unexpected Traveller; 2018-22-26[↩]

Remember: links were correct at time of publication.