Hrádek (Hrádek) Castle

Hrádek stands in Hrádek near Susice in the district of Klatovy and represents a valuable case of transformation of medieval military buildings in a comfortable barony residence. The castle area has been protected as a cultural monument since 1964.

The oldest mansion in this place was a fortress from the 14th century, where Sezima a Protiva z Hrádku was based. Since 1371, the village has fallen under a velhartic estate and has lost its importance over time. In the fifteenth century there were purcrabs - especially Matěj a Ojíř z Vlčkovic - but soon the fort was completely abandoned. The turnover came in the early sixteenth century when the estate bought Jan Rendl z Úšavy and then sold it to Václav Vintířová from Vlčkovice. The other owner was Kryštof Račín z Račína, whose sons Vojtěch and Jan, after 1568, had the old fort built in the Renaissance style. This reconstruction, carried out according to the European trends at the time, formed the core of all future adjustments.

The key owner was Vojtěch Rachín, whose sons Adam and Christopher inherited the property in 1575 and extended it to the rest of the town. However, by participating in the state uprising, the Racine family damaged its position - Humprecht's son, who was involved in the uprising, was sentenced in 1623, leading to a gradual loss of influence and debt of the estate. In 1683 or 1685 Arnošt Vojtěch Račín Hrádek sold Jan Høman Černín from Chudenice, ending more than a hundred years of the Rachin family domination.

In the following century, the castle quickly changed owners. In 1693 Zikmund Maxmilián Hrzán z Harasu bought it, in 1703 Adam Humprecht Koc z Dobrše and four years later Humprecht Zikmund Althann. In 1721 the property became Marie Juliana Truchsässová, which owned it for ten years. After its sale he became owner of Jan Desfours and his son Bedřich intervened in the form of a castle in a fundamental way - he added a baroque new castle and modified the western wing of the old building. In 1775, a significant construction activity was completed by the chapel of St. Valburg. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Desfour equipped it with classical elements that gave the castle its present charm. In 1827 he transferred to the property of Karl Theodore Sturmfelder and the last aristocratic owners - the Henneberg family - owned him until 1945.

The building site consists of several separate elements. The core is two single-storey Renaissance wings with the remains of decorative sgraffiti plaster and interior vaulted ceilings. The new baroque castle is triple wing with entrance risalite and staircase decorated with statues of angels. The Chapel of St. Valburga has a traditional Baroque plan with pilasters and a flat vault. The area is complemented by economic buildings, park and garden. Two bastion in the southern corners of the fenced wall is the rest of the second, already completely extinct castle.

After the second half of the twentieth century, when the local national committee set up apartments and warehouses here, Pavel Lejsek bought it in 2000 and had it reconstructed. The reconstruction was completed in 2010, from which the castle has a hotel, spa complex, restaurant and part is accessible to the public.