Kroměříž Castle
Baroque castle and gardens, UNESCO-listed, former bishop's residence.
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Kroměříž Castle, also known as Zámek Kroměříž or Arcibiskupský zámek, is a castle in Kroměříž, Czech Republic. It served as the principal residence of the bishops and, from 1777, the archbishops of Olomouc. The castle and its gardens were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998 due to their exceptionally well-preserved and outstanding Baroque gardens.
Lore & Background
A major fire gutted the castle in March 1752, after which Bishop Hamilton commissioned imperial artists Franz Anton Maulbertsch and Josef Stern to decorate the halls. The palace houses an art collection considered the second finest in the country, including Titian's last mythological painting, The Flaying of Marsyas.
A significant addition to the collection was made by Bishop Karel in Cologne in 1673. The palace also contains an outstanding musical archive and a library of 33,000 volumes. Specific rooms, such as the library and the Mirror Hall, were used by Miloš Forman as a stand-in for Vienna's Hofburg Imperial Palace during filming of Amadeus (1984).
Reader's Guide
Kroměříž Castle is significant as a well-preserved example of a Baroque aristocratic residence, but its primary importance lies in its Pleasure Garden, described by UNESCO as a very rare and largely intact example of a Baroque garden. The garden was designed by Italian architects Filiberto Lucchese and Giovanni Pietro Tencalla, blending Italian Baroque with French Formal Baroque influences. The castle's art collection, which includes Titian's The Flaying of Marsyas, is considered the second finest in the country.
The site also features a 19th-century English garden near the palace, which sustained damage during floods in 1997. The castle's interiors served as a filming location for the 1984 film Amadeus, standing in for Vienna's Hofburg Imperial Palace, though Mozart never visited Kroměříž. The castle's musical archive contains some of Mozart's compositions.
More in World Heritage Sites in the Czech Republic
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Kroměříž Castle (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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