Kačina Castle
The Kačina Castle (German Katschina ) is located in the municipality of Svatý Mikuláš one kilometer north of Nové Dvory in the Okres Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic . The palace was built as a summer residence at the beginning of the 19th century, influenced by the history of the imperial Russian summer residence in Gatchina near St. Petersburg, and was named after it. It is considered one of the most important buildings in the Empire style in Bohemia . The castle is surrounded by an English park with an orangery .
In the castle there is an agricultural museum and a presentation on the family history of the Chotek von Chotkow and Wognin , an ancient noble family in Bohemia . The circular library with a colonnade containing valuable old atlases and the palace theater with stage technology and backdrops from the 19th century are noteworthy in terms of architectural history .
history
The plan of the Chotek - in the diplomatic service of the Habsburgs at the Russian Tsar's court - to build a palace like this one in Gatchina near St. Petersburg on a waterless hill in the manor Neuhof near Kuttenberg in Bohemia , turned out to be difficult. The construction and the water connection were hardly affordable. But the castle, after it was integrated into the landscape in spite of all difficulties, became a picturesque, noteworthy building of the feudal period . Whether Gatchina was the name giver in Russia is occasionally doubted in the literature, as there is a similar place name in a Latin document from the 12th century from the area of the Katschina Castle in Bohemia.
Johann Rudolph Chotek von Chotkow had the castle built between 1802 and 1822. The Dresden architect Christian Friedrich Schuricht provided the design . The construction work was entrusted to the Austrian architect Georg Fischer , professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1806 , and in 1807 he was taken over by his colleague Johann Philipp Joendl . In 1823 members of the von Chotek family moved their residence from Neuhof Castle (Nové Dvory) to Kačina. Until it was expropriated in favor of Czechoslovakia in 1948, the Kacina Castle was owned by the South Tyrolean Castel Fondo branch of the Thun and Hohenstein family . Since 2013 it has been mentioned in the tourist route Europastraße Historical Theaters .
Trivia
Kačina Castle was used as the castle of Count Chojnicki when Josef Roth's Radetzky March was filmed.
In 2018 a scene from the film T-34 was filmed in the library .
literature
- Hans-Ulrich Engel: Castles and palaces in Bohemia. Based on old templates, 2nd edition 1978. Frankfurt am Main, p. 78, illustration p. 200, ISBN 3-8035-8013-7 .
- Lillian Schacherl: Bohemia. Cultural image of a landscape. Prestel-Verlag, Munich 1966, p. 309
- Procházka novel : Genealogical handbook of extinct Bohemian noble families. Neustadt an der Aisch 1973, ISBN 3-7686-5002-2 , p. 54 ff. Chotek lineage (Chotek z Choczkowa az Wognina, Chotek von Chotkowa and Wognin)
Web links
Coordinates: 49 ° 58 ′ 54 ″ N , 15 ° 20 ′ 46 ″ E