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Teplice Castle is the seat of the Regional Museum. On the promontory, under which healing hot springs flow, Queen Judith founded a Benedictine monastery in the 2nd half of the 12th century. During the Hussite wars, the monastery was significantly damaged and around 1435 the nuns left it. The Teplice estate fell into the hands of secular owners and a feudal residence was built on the site of the monastery buildings. In the 2nd half of the 15th century, Queen Johana built a fortress here, in the 16th century Volf of Vřesovice built a castle church and began to build the main building of the castle, which defines the southern side of the Castle Square. During the Vchynsky (1580-1634) the unfinished main tract was rebuilt in the Renaissance style and the left wing was attached to it. After the death of the last Czech owner of Teplice, Vilém Vchynský, the Aldringen family became the owners of the chateau, whose successors, the Clary-Aldringens, resided here until 1945. The Baroque stage of the chateau’s construction includes the New Building (west wing), to which a theater was added in the 2nd half of the 18th century, expanded in 1800 by a charming Empire vestibule. During the last major reconstruction that began at the end of the 18th century, the chateau church was re-Gothic and the façade of the main building of the chateau was modified in the Classicist style. Since 1947, the chateau has been the seat of the museum. On the first floor of the building, there are exhibitions focused on the prehistory of northwestern Bohemia, the art of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque, spa and the development of ceramic production in the region, there is a permanent exhibition of clocks, a numismatic cabinet and some castle interiors with period furnishings. The visitor circuit also includes an inner courtyard with a marked floor plan of the monastery basilica and a rarely preserved Romanesque crypt. |
