Kynžvart Castle

The Renaissance chateau was built in the valley below the Kynžvart castle sometime between 1585 and 1597. Its exact form is no longer known today and we do not know any period depiction of the chateau. However, relatively significant parts of the original Renaissance building have been preserved in the later Classicist Metternich chateau. The most famous owner was certainly Prince von Metternich-Winneburg. The manor was lent in 1623 (23.5.) and in 1630 ceded to the five Metternich brothers. The imperial count Filipp Emmerich von Metternich (great-great-great-grandfather of the later chancellor) had a new Baroque chateau built from the remains of the dilapidated Renaissance Cedvic chateau sometime in 1681-1691. At present, the chateau is beautifully reconstructed and one of its greatest attractions is the chancellor’s aristocratic library of an encyclopaedic character containing over 12 thousand titles in 24 thousand volumes. Among the 160 manuscripts there is, for example, a unique fragment of the Five Books of Moses from the turn of the 8th and 9th centuries. 230 incunabula in 145 volumes represent one of the largest collections of incunabula in the Czech Republic.