Křivoklát Castle

The earliest notices of Křivoklát stand in the chronicle of Cosmas under the years 1110–1113, when Vladislav I is said to have held his cousin Otto of Olomouc prisoner there. Přemysl Otakar I issued two charters at the castle in 1222 and 1224.

Tomáš Durdík held that the early medieval castle stood elsewhere and was moved to the present spur only around 1230. Excavation of the southern outer ward in 2004–2006 found a massive timber-laced rampart containing pottery of the ninth and tenth centuries, which makes it probable that Křivoklát has stood on its present site from the first. Building in stone began most likely under Přemysl Otakar I and went on in phases to the end of Přemysl Otakar II's reign.

Rudolf of Habsburg garrisoned Křivoklát with Austrians and Swabians, and after his death they refused to give the castle up to Henry of Carinthia. Vilém Zajíc of Valdek took it instead; he began as Henry's supporter, turned against him, and on 9 December 1310 rode out in a successful attack on Henry's army as it passed from Prague through the Křivoklát lands with hostages and plunder.

When Prague Castle burned in 1316, Queen Elizabeth took refuge at Křivoklát with three children, and from September 1316 to March 1317 Vilém guarded the small prince Wenceslas — the future Charles IV. The boy was brought back after Vilém's death in 1319 and remained until 4 April 1323, when he was taken away to France. The burgrave Oldřich Pluh of Rabštejn held Henry of Habsburg, captured at Mühldorf, in the castle until September 1323.

Wenceslas IV spent much of his youth at Křivoklát, and in the autumn of 1380 received there the embassy of Richard II of England, which came to ask for the hand of his sister Anne. After 1390 he preferred Žebrák and Točník.

In 1420 Sigismund used the treasure stored at the castle to pay his mercenaries. On 18 March 1422 fire broke out in the stables and the whole castle burned; in early April the Praguers occupied the damaged shell and soon passed it to their allies. Hanuš of Kolovraty afterwards stormed it, taking Absolon of Chříč and fifty retainers, and left a garrison which Absolon's brother Žibřid besieged, and by one account took and held for some days, before Hanuš returned with Aleš Holický of Šternberk and drove him off. Aleš held Křivoklát and nearby Týřov in pledge and lived there until his death in 1455. In 1471 the newly elected Vladislav II had the castle bought back.

Křivoklát was the only royal castle in Bohemia at Vladislav Jagiellon's disposal, and the late Gothic rebuilding he ordered, directed by Benedikt Rejt and Hans Spiess, gave it the form it keeps in its main lines. The defences were modernised at the same time with a battery tower, a bollwerk and the round Golden bastion on the south-western corner.

In August 1496 four leaders of the Kutná Hora miners' revolt were held here; three were executed in the courtyard and the fourth escaped after stunning the executioner. Under the Habsburgs it became a harsh state prison. Jan Augusta, bishop of the Unity of Brethren, was kept for sixteen years from 1547 to 1563 under twenty guards fetched from Germany so he could not talk with them; he tried to escape, was caught and tortured. Edward Kelley, the English alchemist who had promised Rudolf II the elixir of life, was imprisoned after he killed one of the courtiers. A further fire in 1597 nearly destroyed the castle.

Fire damaged 38 rooms on 3 June 1643, and Ferdinand III's repairs ran to 1644. The Wallensteins bought it in 1685 and the Fürstenbergs came in by marriage in the next century. The last great fire, on 18 August 1826, began in the chief administrator's flat and destroyed practically the whole castle; repairs did not start until 1856 and ran to 1921. After 1880 Josef Mocker and Kamil Hilbert, the architects completing St Vitus's cathedral, carried out a purist reconstruction, Hilbert rebuilding the partly collapsed north wing.

In 1929, after the ministry of agriculture placed the estate under forced administration, Max Egon II Fürstenberg sold Křivoklát to the Czechoslovak state for 118.5 million crowns. The state carried the repairs on, finishing them only in 1952 after the interruption of the Second World War. Křivoklát has been protected as a cultural monument since 1965 and a national cultural monument since 1989. It belongs to the Czech Republic, is administered by the National Heritage Institute and open to visitors, holding collections of hunting weapons, Gothic paintings and books.