Dänemark Archaeological site

Near Kutná Hora, on the territory of Žižkova above the left bank of Vrchlice, lies the prehistoric castle Dänemark. He carries his name by the nearby mill, which was named because the Danes worked in his barn. Since 1987 it has been protected as a cultural monument. What makes this settlement special is the fact that here in the acropolis, the remains of the oldest known building from the painted wall in Czech territory - a stone-age building that lasted millennia.

The fort was built in the middle of the eneolite by members of the Jewish culture. The site has been inhabited for a long time: archaeologists have also managed to find ceramics from the bronze age belonging to the period of the Ukrainian and Shield culture. These discoveries, which were made in the 1980s by Milan and Marie Zapotský, indicate the persistence of the settlement over long periods of time.

The acropolis - the inner strength - was 60 to 20 metres and lay on narrow, sharp slopes from three sides. The north side, the only one accessible, led to a vast front. The fortification was created in two construction phases. In the first stage, the settlements were guarded by simple palisades from stakes. Inputs were cleverly solved: some of the gates formed from two six-metre pole walls perpendicular to the course of the palisade, others were formed by the interruption of the palisade with the mutual overlap of the ends, which formed a narrow entrance aisle.

In the younger phase, the defense has grown significantly. The forefront was now protected by three trenches in approximately five-metre intervals. Among the trenches were massive walls of folded facestones. The trenches were four to six metres wide; The deepest of them, excavated in the rock, overcame entry blocks or wooden bridges. The Acropolis was guarded by its own wall from various large stones. At a later stage, it was further divided by two rows of palisades separated by standing stones.

A number of residential buildings from different times were found in the front and in the acropolis. Archaeologists have unveiled post cottages four to five metres in size with inner bulkheads and furnaces, as well as deepened semi-earths. The outer space outside the forefront was also hidden by the stonemason workshop of the roving culture.

Today the visitor can imagine the power of these neolithic fortifications when he passes through Žižkov and sees the terrain relics of the waves and moats. The castle Dänemark testifies to the engineering skills of our oldest ancestors. The oldest painted building in the Czech Republic stands here as a silent testimony of the time when the first fortress in Europe was established.