zámek Sloupno Chateau

The baroque château of Sloupno is located in the village of Sloupno not far from Nový Bydžov. It was built by the Benedictines from the Břevnov-Broumov monastery as their residence.

The monastery acquired the Sloupno estate in sixteen seventy-two, under abbot Tomáš Sartorio. For the Benedictines, the location was paramount. Sloupno lies roughly halfway between Prague's Břevnov and Broumov, and the residence thus served as a stop and a refuge during travels between the two parts of the monastery. In sixteen eighty-seven, the old Renaissance fortress here was converted into a baroque château. However, we do not know what this first château looked like. No older construction can be discerned in the masonry of today's building.

The present building was created after the middle of the eighteenth century, under abbot Benn Löbl. The design was drawn up in seventeen forty-eight by the monastery architect Kilián Ignác Dientzenhofer, and construction took place in the following years. Dientzenhofer thereby drew on his earlier design for the conversion of the Benedictine residence at Kladno.

The château belonged to the Benedictines until nineteen forty-eight. Then it housed a depot of medical supplies from Hradec Králové. During that time, the building deteriorated significantly due to neglected maintenance and purely utilitarian alterations. Today it houses the offices of a company that manufactures light fixtures. That company has carried out rather expensive repairs to the decaying château.

The château stands on the western side of an extensive farmyard, west of the original centre of the village. It is a separate, elongated and symmetrical two-storey building. Both long facades have protruding sections on the sides, so-called risalits. On the eastern side there is additionally a central risalit with bevelled corners, which slightly exceeds the main cornice. The hip roofs are crowned in the middle by a small tower with a clock. The ground floor is decorated with horizontal bands, and on the first floor there are flat vertical framings. The appearance of the facades is completed by richly shaped window framings. On the eastern facade they are more plastic, and it is precisely this facade that is considered the main one. In the axis of both facades there is an entrance portal with a grouped window above it. Above the eastern window is the coat of arms of the Břevnov-Broumov monastery.

The arrangement of the interior is just as clear as the external appearance of the building. The narrower western part is occupied on both storeys by a wide corridor. From the south, a two-armed staircase adjoins it, and at the opposite end on the ground floor there is a chapel of Saint John of Nepomuk. A passageway runs through the building, which on the eastern side opens into an octagonal sala terrena, that is a ground-floor hall. Above it on the first floor is the main hall, and on either side of it are two larger salons. The fifth large salon lies above the chapel. The ground floor is entirely vaulted, and the first floor has flat ceilings. The painterly and stucco decoration mostly dates from the nineteenth century.