Location: Jičín District, North Bohemia Map
Constructed: 14th century by Peter von Wartenberg
Kost is a Gothic castle in the Bohemian Paradise, in the
cadastral territory of Podkost, part of the municipality of
Libošovice in the district of Jičín in the Hradec Králové region. It
is protected as a cultural monument.
The castle was founded
approximately in the middle of the fourteenth century, and its first
documented owner was Beneš III at the end of the first half of the
fourteenth century. from Vartenberg. Kost belonged to his
descendants until the beginning of the fifteenth century, when it
was acquired by the Zajícs from Hazmburk, for whom it became an
important family seat until 1497. During the first half of the
sixteenth century, lords from Šelmberk and Biberštejn took turns at
the castle, who significantly expanded its living spaces. Another
noble family on Kosti became the Lobkovics, under whom the castle
ceased to serve as a noble residence and began to deteriorate. The
neglected castle was bought in 1637 by the Černín family from
Chudenice, who for the next hundred years only carried out
maintenance necessary for the economic operation and administration
of the estate. Since 1738, the castle was owned by the Netoličtí
from Eisenberg, after whom it was inherited by the Kinský dal Borgo
family – the Italian line of the Chlumec branch of the originally
Czech count family of Kinsky. In 1945, the castle was nationalized,
but the descendants of the Kinsky family got it back after the
Velvet Revolution.
The castle from the first half of the
fourteenth century was deliberately demolished and a new castle was
built in its place in the second half of the same century. During
two construction phases, the castle core acquired an approximately
preserved form. Its dominant feature was the large residential
tower, which was complemented by the opposite palace with a round
tower in the corner and a second smaller residential tower to the
north. In the first half of the sixteenth century, the Biberštejn
family added another residential wing in the space between the
second and third gates. The last major expansion of Kost took place
under the Lobkovics, who had outbuildings built in the basement of
the castle.
The castle stands on a rocky promontory at the junction of three
rocky valleys. One leads towards Libošovice and is called Svatoprokopské
(also Prokopské). Another valley is called Plakánek. The last one is the
Turnovské údolí, which, like the previous two, is watery.
The
Bílý, Černý and Labutí ponds were built around the castle on all three
sides, the first two of which have survived to this day. By breaching
the dams of these ponds, it was possible to transform the surroundings
of the castle into difficult-to-access terrain. A little further from
the castle there are two other ponds: in the northern direction, on a
small tributary of Klenice, it is the Partotick pond and in the southern
direction in Plakánek, the Obora (Pilský) pond.
The results of archaeological research carried out during the
reconstruction of the castle in 2019–2020 made it possible to date the
founding of Kosti to the first half of the fourteenth century. Its
builder was Beneš III. from Vartenberg. In 1346, Beneš used the surname
from Sobotka, and three years later, in the foundation document of the
monastery in Venátky nad Jizerou, he was written as Beneš z Kosti for
the first time. At the end of the fifties of the fourteenth century, he
appointed Jan as a chaplain to the castle chapel, while explicitly
stating that he resided in the castle himself.
Beneš died in 1358
and the castle was inherited by his sons Petr and Markvart from
Vartenberk. The brothers owned the castle in Sunday until at least 1371,
but in 1373 they split up, so Markvart got Rohozec and Zbirohy castles,
while Petr kept Kost. Petr was an important courtier of King Wenceslas
IV. and his ambitions were apparently reflected in his quest for
self-presentation by a drastic reconstruction of the castle, during
which the original structure was almost completely demolished.
Peter died around the second half of 1402, and the next holder of the
castle was Jan of Kunštát and Poděbrad, whom Peter's daughter Eliška
married. The last mention of Jan of Kunštát dates from 1407, and two
years later he was certainly already dead. His only daughter Škonka was
still a minor at the time, and therefore her grandmother Žofie, the
widow of Peter from Vartenberk, took over the management of the estate.
She managed it until 1414, when probably Škonka from Kunštát married
Mikuláš Zajíce from Hazmburk. Mikuláš was mentioned as lord of the
castle for the first time on March 12, 1414.
The chapel of the
Virgin Mary used to be a part of the castle already in the fourteenth
century, but before 1412 its patronage was expanded to include the
dedication to John the Baptist. In 1424, the old dedication to the
Virgin Mary was no longer used. According to the hypothesis of Rudolf
Anděl, this happened after the death of Jan of Kunštát in 1409. The
small chapel in the round tower did not allow the placement of another
altar, and therefore a new chapel was built in the courtyard. The large
fresco with the coat of arms of the Hajícs of Hazmburk was probably
painted by Mikuláš Zajíc of Hazmburk. After 1551, the chapel was
dedicated to Saint Anna, who was the patron saint of Anna from
Bibrštejn.
During the Hussite wars, Nicholas's Bone was an important support for
Catholics, and therefore Catholic priests expelled from their parishes
took refuge in it. One of the priests at Kosti was originally the
Žerčice parish priest Ondřej Hrnčíř from Rokycan, who lived in the Red
Tower at the castle and devoted himself to copying the Bible. Folk
legends about the alleged siege of the castle by Jan Žižka relate to the
same period, who, after his failure, was supposed to have uttered the
statements: "He is as hard as a bone." or "The rock belongs to the devil
and the bone to the dog." According to Rudolf Anděl, the legend about
the statements relates to a later siege during the Podebrady Wars, when
they were to be delivered by the commander of the royal army, later
mistaken by people for Jan Žižka.
In 1438, Mikuláš Zajíc from
Hazmburk expanded the Kost estate to include Lhotka, Meziluží, Dobšice
and Bystřice. His childless relative Zbyněk Zajíc from Hazmburk
bequeathed Hazmburk to him in 1452, and in the same year Mikuláš bought
Návarov Castle and Choustníkovo Hradiště four years later. After
Mikuláš's death in 1459, his sons Jan and Oldřich Zajícová from Hazmburk
shared the castle. The childless Oldřich was married to Anna from
Častolovice, Jan married Kateřina from Častolovice, the widow of Herolt
from Kunštát, no later than 1447, and his second wife was Princess Anna
Hlubčická († 1478) in 1461.
Both brothers took part in the
election of Jiří from Poděbrady as king, but later they were prominent
members of the opposition unity of Zelenohora. In the following wars,
Kost was besieged by the king's army in 1467 and 1469. In both cases,
Jan Zajíc of Hazmburk averted the capture of the castle by concluding a
truce with the king. Nevertheless, the brothers remained in the service
of the Hungarian king Matthias Corvín, and it was only at the St.
Wenceslas Diet in Prague in 1479 that Jan Zajíc from Hazmburk pledged
his loyalty to King Vladislav.
Jan Zajíc from Hazmburk died in 1495. His sons took over the
family estate, but Mikuláš died already in 1496 and Jan the
following year. Mikuláš's minor son Jan Zajíc from Hazmburk became
the heir, for whom Zdeněk Lev from Rožmitál managed the property. In
order to pay off the debts caused by the previous wars, he sold Kost
to Jan of Šelmberk in 1497. Her estate included the towns of Sobotka
and Dolní Bousov, the villages of Březen, Čálovice, Staňkova Lhota,
Spyšova, Kdanice, Oseč, Proseč, Vesec, Neprivěc, Stéblovice,
Libošovice, Rytířova Lhota, Malechovice, Dolní Rokytňany, Horní
Rokytňany, Osenice, Mackova Lhota, Zelenecká Lhota, Skuřina,
Záhumenní Lhota, Rohatsko, Řitonice, Újezdec, Vrbice, Bukovina, Vlčí
Pole, Nednebohy, Ochvišťovice, Spařence, Markvartice, Horní Bousov,
Přepeře, Studénka and Trosky Castle with its own estate.
Of
Jan's sons, Kost was inherited by the youngest Jindřich from
Šelmberk in 1508. For him, the estate's debts reached seventeen
thousand Czech groschen. In order to pay off the debts, Jindřich
sold the Kost and Trosky castles to Jan of Biberštejn. The new owner
of the Kost manor registered the dowry of his wife Anna from
Vartenberk. As he was childless in 1545, he left the estate to his
brothers Jeroným, Kryštof and Zikmund from Biberštejn. He himself
only retained the right to bequeath five thousand kopecks, which he
eventually bequeathed to his wife and other people. Jan of
Biberštejn died in 1551, and of the heirs, only Kryštof was alive at
that time, who took over the management of the estate, but he
himself lived mainly in Frýdlanta, and he died on December 15, 1551.
A few days before, Kost registered Anna z Bibrštejn, the wife of Jan
Popel from Lobkovice, another Anna z Bibrštejn, the wife of Kryštof
Popel from Lobkovice, and her sister Barbora in the land records.
The Manx estates, however, became a royal demise.
Both Anne and Barbara took over the estate and each had a third
share. The first to die was Anna, the wife of Jan Popel from Lobkovice.
She bequeathed her share to her husband with the wish that he pay three
hundred kopeck groschen to his daughters upon their marriage. However,
Jan transferred the estate to Barbara and the second Anna. Barbora
married Vilém Trčka from Lípa and transferred her half of Kosti, Trosek,
Dolní Bousov, Čímyšle and other villages to Kryštof Popel from
Lobkovice. Kryštof acquired the other half from his wife Anna and in
1559 sold Trosky with the work Řitonic to Zikmund Krysl from Louč. On
the contrary, he bought the village of Loveč and the farm of Lavice. In
1576, he founded a brewery on the outskirts of Kosti. The castle was
administered by governors for Kryštof, who were Michal Sak from
Bohuňovice (1567), Zikmund Světlík (1579), official Matyáš Sobek from
Šember (1584), Jan Hylbrant from Všechlap (1584), Jan Vlk the Younger
from Kvítkov (1585) or 1590 Jiří Měděnec from Ratibořice and clerk Jan
Mšenský.
After Kryštof's death, Oldřich Felix Popel from
Lobkovice became the next owner of the castle, who significantly
expanded the rights of Sobotka. Simeon Baštěcký from Sobotka managed the
castle for him in the years 1596–1601. Oldřich Felix died in 1604 and
Václav Popel from Lobkovice inherited Kost from his sons. When the
childless man died in 1615, his brother Vilém Popel from Lobkovice took
over the estate. He sold them for 130,000 kopecks of Meissen groschen to
Maria Magdalena Trčková from Lobkovice, who, however, paid only 22,400
kopecks. The rest was to be paid by Polyxena from Lobkovice, who bought
Kost from Maria Magdalena in 1622. She kept the estate until 1632, when
she sold it to Albrecht from Wallenstein for 150,000 Meissen groschen.
Albrecht of Valdštejn appointed Jan Kryštof Otík of Bradský of
Laboun as Kost governor. But he himself paid Polyxena only ten thousand
kopeck groschen, so she applied for the Kost estate after Albrecht's
death in 1634. Kost was supposed to be returned to her by the imperial
resolution of March 24, 1635, but there was a delay of several months,
which was taken advantage of by Vilém of Vřesovice, who took over the
estate on July 28, 1636 due to a certain debt. Polyxena nevertheless
left Kost to her son Václav Eusebius Popel from Lobkovice. On October 7,
1637, he sold the estate to Count Heřman Černín of Chudenice. He settled
with Vilém of Vřesovice by transferring the debt to the estate of
Střekov Castle.
In 1635, the castle was occupied by a detachment
of the imperial army under the command of Count Colloredo. On the night
of May 18-19, a fire broke out in the castle, during which almost the
entire palace wing in the castle core burned down. The fire spared only
the stables and two rooms where the scribes lived.
In 1639, Svatoš Hosian from Marchendorf was the governor of the
castle. In the spring of the following year, eighteen regiments under
the command of Ottavio Piccolomini camped near Sobotka, whose presence
exhausted the economic possibilities of the estate. The castle was
occupied by soldiers on February 26. The crew was made up of 25 men with
a scout and lieutenant Jakub Mayerhofer, to whom the governor had to pay
a regular salary and supply them with food. In addition, he had to
provide food for six Swedish prisoners. When six more regiments
approached the castle, Heřman Černín asked General Piccolomini to leave
the army. At the intercession of Zigmund Jan Myslík from Hyršov,
Piccolomini complied and the soldiers marched to Prague. Nevertheless,
until the end of the Thirty Years' War, the landscape around Kosti was
often plagued by passing troops.
The childless Heřman Černín
appointed Humprecht Jan Černín as his main heir, but he bequeathed Kost
and the distant Sedčice to Sylvia Kateřina Černínová from Millesimo. In
1658, Kosti was threatened with demolition, because according to the
examination of the military engineer Pieroni, the castle could serve as
a fortress for the emperor's enemies. Sylvie Kateřina appealed against
this, arguing that during the previous wars no army had used Kost as a
fortress, that the castle was easily threatened by artillery fire and
that many of the walls had already been demolished. This was followed by
verification of whether the demolition of the castle was necessary, and
with gradual delays the whole matter was forgotten.
Humprecht Jan
Černín finally acquired Kost, but at that time the castle had not served
as a noble residence for a hundred years. In addition, the new owner
built a Humprecht castle nearby. After his death, the castle was taken
over by his son Heřman Jakub Černín. In 1689, the vaults of the
courtyard parlors, from which the individual rooms and the tower were
accessed, collapsed in the neglected castle. The governor at the time
recommended their complete demolition and replacement with a wooden one.
In 1690, the medieval walls of the Warenberg Palace collapsed and the
remaining three palaces were converted into grain warehouses. Since
then, the castle was used only by the administration of the estate, and
several rooms in the so-called Bibrštejn Palace were used for occasional
stays by the nobility.
Kost remained with the Černíns until 1738. At that time, due to
debts, the price of the Kosmonosy and Kost estates was estimated, while
Kost itself was valued at two thousand guilders. The new owner of the
castle became Václav Kazimír Netolický from Eisenberg, who made the Kost
estate a trust. In 1760, it was inherited by his son Jan Adam Netolicky
from Eisenberg, who died in 1769 without a male heir. The bone was
therefore inherited by his sister Anna Terezie, married to Count
František Václav Vratislav of Mitrovic. After them, the castle passed to
the son of Antonín Václav Vratislav Netolicky and the grandson Evžen
Vratislav of Mitrovic. His family died out by the sword in 1867, and his
sisters' dispute over the inheritance flared up for several years. In
1872, it was decided that Kost would go to Eugene's relative Flaminio
dal Borgo.
In 1866, the last battle for the castle took place
during the Prussian-Austrian War. Kost was occupied by soldiers of the
Cheb regiment, the rest of which camped east of the castle. On the
evening of June 28, the soldiers clashed with Prussian patrols, and the
firefights continued the next day. The Austrian soldiers eventually
retreated to the castle, where they repelled two Prussian attacks. The
Austrian garrison then withdrew to the army concentrated near Jičín, and
the Prussians occupied the castle.
In the years 1874–1875, restoration works were carried out, the aim
of which was to repair the most serious damages. At the same time, the
battlements, terrace walls or masonry and the roof of the Red Tower were
restored. In the third courtyard, the outbuildings were demolished and
the sala terrena under the White Tower was adapted to store the
carriage. After the fire on September 27, 1946, the roof of the
Bibrštejn Palace was restored, and after an architectural analysis,
extensive restoration work began on the castle in 1953.
Giovanni
Kinský dal Borgo (* 1949), the elder son of Václav Norbert Kinský
(1924–2008) and the last owner of the castle, Anna Marie dal
Borgo-Netolicke (1925–1980), restored the castle in 1992 as the rightful
heir of his mother and a Czech citizen. After that, Giovanni Kinský dal
Borgo transferred half of the ownership of the castle to his brother Pio
Kinský dal Borgo, and he owns the castle through the Kinský dal Borgo
joint-stock company.
In 2021, the extensive reconstruction of the
castle that began in 2019 ended, during which the area was drained, the
walls and subsoil were stabilized and the ramparts were repaired.
Furthermore, the rock massif was stabilized and the plastering on the
Warenberg and Šelmberk palaces was completed. The price of the
reconstruction exceeded one hundred million crowns.
The history
of the castle and its surroundings was devoted to the prominent Czech
historian Josef Pekař, who wrote a two-volume monograph, The Book of
Bones, depicting the economic and historical history of the local estate
(mainly from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century).
The oldest construction phase of the Kost castle from the first half
of the fourteenth century disappeared due to deliberate demolition, and
after the reconstruction in the second half of the fourteenth century,
Kost belonged to the relaxed variants of block-type castles.
From
the first construction phase, it was possible to prove the existence of
three buildings archaeologically: a gate, a bergfrit and a smaller round
tower. The supposed wall was completely dismantled and the original
palace most likely stood in the place of the later large square tower.
The remains of bergfrit are located under the preserved chapel. The
tower had masonry 3.2 meters thick and an outer diameter of 9.9 meters.
A smaller round tower was located southeast of the bergrift and had a
diameter of 7.7 meters. The torso of two walls survived from the gate.
The original building stood north of the bergfrit and most likely had
the character of a tower structure with a side 7.5 meters long. During
the rebuilding, the outer portal of the gate was walled up and the
building served as a tower for a certain period of time.
According to Tomáš Durdík, the only surviving building from the oldest
period was a square residential tower built of quarry stone in the
northwest corner of the castle core, but it was probably built only at
the beginning of Peter of Vartenberk's rebuilding. The tower had three
flat-ceilinged floors and a barrel-vaulted cellar. The top floor of the
tower with richly profiled windows is the result of modifications at the
end of the fourteenth century.
In the second half of the
fourteenth century, the direction of the access road, which spirals up
around the rock to the castle, was changed. The core acquired a
preserved trapezoidal outline with a dominant five-story donjon. A
palace was built along the western wall, connected by a narrower
connecting wing to the oldest tower in the northwestern tip of the core.
In the corner of the palace there is a round tower (called Červená), in
the interior of which used to be the original castle chapel. The
diameter of the tower is only six meters. At its foot is the first gate
of the time with a gate for pedestrians. Their portals were closed by
drawbridges lowered over the moat. The second gate is located under the
northwest corner of the palace in the places where a square tower rises
from the straight wall. The inner courtyard was entered through the
third gate on the north side of the core. In the courtyard, the kitchen
stood opposite the palace, and the northeast corner was occupied by a
large chapel with a double-sided end. The chapel first had a flat beam
ceiling, which, according to Zdenek Wirth, was replaced shortly after
1551 with a brick cross vault with lunettes. The defense capability of
the core on the south, east and north sides was strengthened by the
fence, in the wider part of which farm buildings were most likely
located in front of the third gate.
The Big Tower, the so-called
White Tower, has a ground plan in the shape of an almost regular
trapezoid with a longer side 17.6 meters long and a shorter side
fourteen meters long. The width of the tower measures twelve meters and
the thickness of the perimeter walls reaches 3.2 meters. The oldest
entrance to the tower led at the level of the second floor through the
pavlačka from the southern wall. The lower levels of the tower were
originally used to store grain. The main living area is located under
the crown of the masonry and is reflected in the large windows on the
facade. A safe was inserted into the slanted wall of one corner of the
living floor.
The interior of the opposite palace almost
disappeared after the collapse of the longitudinal walls in 1690 and the
subsequent transformation into a granary. Only the cellars made up of
three barrel-vaulted spaces are original. The room adjacent to the round
tower has a square floor plan and its vault is double. Originally, it
was supported by semi-circular, later walled, arcades, reduced to a
central pillar. A similar spatial division probably also had a raised
ground floor, later adapted to the chauffeur's apartment, accessible
from the courtyard by the staircase provided. Only fragments of the
portico survived from the staircase. The round tower was accessible from
the ground floor and on the second floor, where the chapel used to be,
also through a pointed portal from the neighboring hall.
To the
north, a narrower wing adjoined the palace, from which only the black
kitchen and vestibule survived on the raised ground floor. In the
sixteenth century, this part of the castle was rebuilt into the
so-called Šelmber Palace. At the same time, a late Gothic house was
built at the foot of the White Tower for the accommodation of officials,
which was converted into a carriage shed in 1875. The living quarters of
the castle were further expanded by Jan of Biberštejn, who in 1545 had
the so-called Biberštejn palace built in the space between the first and
second gates. It was connected to the old palace in the castle core by a
passage above the second gate.
In the second half of the
sixteenth century, a brewery was built in the castle grounds, and gates
led from the newly fenced area towards Sobotka and Turnov. The gate at
the White Pond was demolished in the mid-nineteenth century and a statue
of St. John of Nepomuck was placed in its place. Under the White Tower,
a long building designed for the administration of the estate was built.
All buildings from this construction phase and the Bibrštejn Palace were
provided with sgraffito plaster.
Albrecht of Wallenstein intended
to rebuild Kosti into one of the main fortresses of his estate, but
after his death, only the baroque sala terrena at the foot of the White
Tower was realized from the entire project.
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