zámek Bystřice pod Hostýnem Chateau

The castle in Bystřice pod Hostýnem is a Baroque Classicist structure. It grew on the site of an older Gothic water fortress from the fifteenth century. The town is located in Kroměříž district in the Zlín region, twenty-three kilometers to the northeast of Kroměříž.

The fortress was founded by the lords of Tvorkova after the decline of Obřany castle. It is first documented in fourteen forty. In the middle of the sixteenth century, a Renaissance castle apparently arose in its place. Its final form was given to it in sixteen sixteen by the then owners Bohunka of Vítkov and Václav Bítovský of Bítov. Stone coats of arms above the entrance gate commemorate them.

After the Battle of the White Mountain, the castle was confiscated from the Bítovskýs and fell to the Lobkowicz family. However, by sixteen fifty it was acquired by the prominent Austrian Rottal family. After the middle of the eighteenth century, the last member of the family, František Antonín of Rottal, and after him his daughter Marie Amalie, had the castle rebuilt into the form that has essentially been preserved to this day. To the Renaissance forecourt with two Baroque wings, two Classicist wings were added between seventeen sixty-five and seventeen sixty-eight according to the design of Moravian architect František Antonín Grimm. From this period come also two colored coats of arms above the gate to the second courtyard.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the castle enjoyed a rich cultural life. The new owner, Count František Antonín della Rovere di Monte l'Abbate, established a castle theater here and kept a chapel. In the ground floor of one of the Baroque wings, a ceramic manufactory, the so-called Majolikakammer, was created at that time. In eighteen five, the Festival Hall received a Romantic wall painting with motifs of Egyptian landscape.

From eighteen twenty-seven, the castle belonged to the Loudon family, descendants of the famous Austrian general whose statue stands in the castle park. They built a neo-Gothic chapel and modernized the castle's furnishings. The first of the Loudons had a valuable park planted and a greenhouse built, where he cultivated rare exotic plants, among others pineapples. In eighteen ninety-seven, Emperor Francis Joseph the First visited the castle. A memorial inscription on the east wing commemorates that visit. From the beginning of the twentieth century come the sundial, which Hanuš Schwaiger painted between the windows of the second castle building.

In the nineteen thirties, the Loudons got into financial difficulties and sold the castle to the state. From nineteen thirty-five to nineteen ninety, the army stored medical supplies here. They still have supplies in the park and deploy field hospitals from there to countries affected by war or catastrophe.

In nineteen ninety-one, the castle was taken over by the city and is gradually restoring it. Concerts and exhibitions are held here. Since two thousand two, there has been a permanent exhibition of East Bohemian sculptor Vojmír Volek in the ground floor, and since two thousand three, a Municipal Ceramics Museum.