Trosky Castle

Trosky was founded by Čeněk of Wartenberg in the second half of the 14th century on a pair of volcanic necks — the exposed fillings of vents that once pierced the surrounding sandstones and marls, since worked on by frost and by human hands. He set a tower on each: the six-sided Baba, the Crone, on the lower rock 47 metres above the courtyard, and the four-sided Panna, the Maiden, on the higher outcrop 57 metres up. Between them ran the elongated castle core with two palaces, walls 1.5 to 2 metres thick and as much as 15 metres high, and a walled outer ward along the northern side. Neither of the two gates was protected by a ditch. In the ground floor of the smaller, largely timber palace stood a smithy that was still working in the 17th century. The name means debris, and it belonged to the crumbling rocks before it belonged to the castle.

Archaeology puts the foundation significantly earlier than the first written mention, which comes in 1396 — by which date Čeněk was dead, and named in the record with the epithet "of Trosky". He no longer owned the place when he died: financial trouble in the early 1390s had forced him to make the castle over to King Wenceslaus IV, from whom it was acquired by Otto III of Bergau, first recorded as its owner in 1399.

Otto the Younger of Bergau inherited from his father and in 1415 joined Jan Městecký of Opočno in falling on the monastery at Opatovice and stripping it. For a man who passed himself off as a zealous Catholic it was an awkward piece of work, and the story that followed him is that he hid the monastery's famous treasure at Trosky, in an underground cellar sealed by a boulder so heavy that nobody could shift it. Scree eventually buried the boulder and closed the way to the valuables for good.

In the Hussite Wars the castle was one of the firm supports of the Catholic side, holding open the link between Bohemia and the Lusatian League alongside Kost, Kumburk, Frýdštejn, Bezděz and Ralsko. The Hussites tried it twice and failed both times, in 1424 and again in 1428, the second attempt pressed by Jan Královec, captain of the Taborite army, and coming shortly after the castle had burned.

In 1438 or 1439 the castle fell to men who simply took it. Kryštof Šof of Helfenburg and a companion named Švejkar stormed Trosky, seized Otto the Younger himself, and settled in to prey on the villages around. An army raised by the sworn peace associations of East Bohemia and Boleslav besieged Trosky and nearby Valdštejn but could not take the rock. The feud dragged on until 1444, when the forces of Görlitz and Zittau, both towns of the Lusatian League, combined and broke Šof's band. The castle went back to Otto, who died soon afterwards, and his son Jan of Bergau inherited; Otto's widow Margareth had made Trosky her residence by that same year.

Jan of Bergov sold Trosky in 1455 to Jan Zajíc of Hazmburk at Kost, who folded it into the Kost estate. As a member of the Zelená Hora Alliance he set himself against King George of Poděbrady, taking the formal office of supreme chancellor from Matthias Corvinus, and in 1467 the royal army besieged Kost to bring him to heel. The submission did not last. In 1469 George's forces laid siege to Kost, Trosky, Budyně nad Ohří, Hrubá Skála and Návarov; every one of them fell except Kost itself. The garrison at Trosky surrendered after 28 August and royal troops moved in — though Jan Zajíc then came to terms with the king, was pardoned, and had his property handed back.

The family held Trosky until 1497, when the guardian of the young heir, Zdeněk Lev of Rožmitál, sold Kost and Trosky together on 2 June to Jan of Šelmberk. His son Jindřich ran up debts heavy enough that he made both castles over to his largest creditor, Jan of Bibrštejn, and after Bibrštejn's son Kryštof the castle came to the Lobkowicz family; Kryštof of Lobkowicz and his wife Anna sold it in 1559 to Jindřich of Smiřice at Skály for 6,500 score of Bohemian groschen. By the 16th century no lord lived there, and the place was kept by the officials who ran the estate.

The Smiřice estates were confiscated after Albrecht Jan Smiřický died in 1618, and in 1622 Trosky passed to Albrecht of Wallenstein. Through the Thirty Years' War it served as a fortress and was fought over hard: the Swedes took it in 1639, an Imperial army took it back a year later, and the two sides' garrisons alternated on the rock until 1648, when Imperial troops stormed and burned it for the last time. It was never repaired. When the Jesuit scholar Bohuslav Balbín came up to the ruins in 1681 he judged that, dilapidated as it was, the castle could still have been put right.

The Wallensteins kept the ruin until 1821, when they sold it to Jan Lexa of Aehrenthal, who began altering it in the romantic taste of the day. A spiral staircase intended to open the summit of Panna to visitors was started in 1841 and abandoned unfinished when Jan Lexa died in 1843. The Czech Tourist Club began repairing both towers, the walls and the gates in 1923, two years before the ruin became state property, and further work followed in 1934–1935; the later 20th century brought professional intervention to stabilise the rock mass and what was left of the buildings. A staircase to the Baba tower was built in 1999–2000, new flooring and a steel viewing gallery at its summit in early 2024. Trosky has been a national cultural monument since 2002.