Zvíkov Castle

Zvíkov stands on a steep granodiorite promontory above the confluence of the Vltava and the Otava, where the ramparts and ditches in its forefield are taken for a prehistoric hillfort.

The castle was founded late in the reign of Ottokar I, who died in 1230; the exact year is unknown. The first written mention, in 1234, names a burgrave, Konrád of Janovice, so at least part of it stood by then. Wenceslas I enlarged the core with two palace wings and in 1249 imprisoned there his own son Přemysl and the nobles who had joined the prince's revolt, among them Mikuláš, bishop of Prague. The castle's importance brought a second burgrave alongside Konrád: Hirzo of Klingenberg held that post from 1250 to 1253.

Under Ottokar II the ring wall was finished and the core closed into a five-sided plan of palace wings, among them the lavish Královský — the King's Own — their parts linked by a monumental arcaded walk. The oldest building is older still: the twenty-metre Markomanka, whose first-floor chamber is called the Crown Hall and may have held the coronation jewels for a time.

In 1285, and perhaps again two years later, the castle was besieged by the army of Záviš of Falkenštejn, and Bavor III of Strakonice took the burgraviate in 1289. In 1307 Rudolf of Habsburg pledged Zvíkov to Jindřich of Rosenberg, whose family had come to see the royal fortress as a threat to their interests.

The Rosenbergs held Zvíkov in pledge until 1335, when Charles IV bought it back for the crown and entered it in his draft law-book, the Majestas Carolina, among the castles a king could not alienate. His successors ignored the provision.

Wenceslas IV's burgrave Jan Hájek of Hodětín talked away the threat of a Hussite siege in 1424. The Hussites returned in 1429 and settled to a siege of four months without taking the place; traces of their siege works survive around the castle, and stone artillery balls inside it. In 1431 Oldřich II of Rosenberg took possession and, on the strength of a forged charter, set about the defences: ditches deepened, ramparts adapted to carry gun positions, and a new parkán on the north side with six square bastions. In 1440 the north gate was moved to the Red Tower and named Železná, the Iron Gate, after the grate that closed it. The Rosenberg works were among the first Bohemian attempts to answer the new artillery, if not accomplished ones.

Jindřich V of Rosenberg made Zvíkov over in 1473 to his uncle Bohuslav Krušina of Švamberk, who commissioned the murals in the chapel of St Wenceslas; the surviving frescoes date from the later fifteenth century. Jindřich III the elder of Švamberk began Renaissance work after the middle of the sixteenth century — a brewery on the old cattle sheds in 1550, the thirty-two-metre bergfrit Hláska raised in 1554 — and Kryštof II bought the castle from the royal chamber in 1574, into hereditary family possession.

Petr II of Švamberk joined the revolt of the Bohemian estates. A garrison of a hundred and forty men held Zvíkov against four thousand imperial troops in 1618, and after the estates were beaten it still refused to give up, holding out until October 1622, when the castle was besieged and plundered. The imperial soldiers damaged the Švamberk archive as well, which Václav Březan had put in order in 1616.

Jan Oldřich of Eggenberg took Zvíkov over in 1622. He had it repaired but never lived there, putting it to military and economic use, and through the Thirty Years' War it held a garrison. By the end of the seventeenth century it had lost its military value and served as a granary.

The Schwarzenbergs acquired the castle in 1719 but resided at neighbouring Orlík, and Zvíkov ceased to be the estate's administrative seat. French troops briefly occupied it in 1741. A great fire destroyed much of it in 1751; the chapel was deconsecrated in 1780 and the palace facade fell in 1829. Karel III of Schwarzenberg arrested the decay between 1840 and 1844, and after 1880 the palaces and courtyard arcades were rebuilt.

The family held Zvíkov until 1948, when it was confiscated; it became a state castle in 1950. Filling the Orlík reservoir, dammed between 1954 and 1962, raised the water twenty-five metres and drowned the small town below the promontory. Protected as a cultural monument since 1963 and listed among national cultural monuments in 1978, Zvíkov is administered by the National Heritage Institute and opens from spring to autumn for exhibitions and stage plays.