Karlštejn Castle

Karlštejn rises in tiers above a wooded valley of the Berounka, its walls and towers stepping up the rock from the imperial palace to the Marian Tower and finally to the massive Great Tower at the summit. It was built for a single purpose that set it apart from ordinary fortresses: Charles IV, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, founded it in 1348 as a treasure house for the Imperial Regalia, the crown jewels of Bohemia, holy relics and other royal valuables. The emperor personally oversaw its building and decoration, which were directed by the future burgrave Vitus of Bítov; the name of the master builder is not recorded.

The layout reads as a hierarchy. On the lowest terrace stands the palace, about 46 metres long, where the emperor lived on the second floor and the empress and her ladies above him. Higher up is the Marian Tower with the Church of the Assumption and the Chapel of St Catherine. At the top the Great Tower, around 60 metres tall and fortified on its own, with walls 4 to 7.5 metres thick, encloses the Chapel of the Holy Cross, consecrated in 1365, where the treasures were kept. Its walls are encrusted with gilding and semi-precious stones, its vault set with stars, sun and moon of Venetian glass, and it is hung with 129 Gothic panel paintings by Master Theodoric, a cycle said to have no equal in scale anywhere. A staircase painted with scenes from the lives of St Wenceslas and St Ludmila leads up to it. The first part of the castle to be built was the well tower, fed by an underground channel cut to bring water from a nearby stream.

The regalia left in 1421, early in the Hussite Wars, and the next year the castle withstood a siege in which the attackers hurled dead bodies and cartloads of dung over the walls. The Bohemian crown jewels later returned and stayed for nearly two centuries, until 1619. Karlštejn was rebuilt in late Gothic and Renaissance style, taken by the Swedes in 1648 and then neglected, before the architect Josef Mocker restored it between 1887 and 1899 in a Gothic Revival spirit that gave the castle the silhouette it has today.

Getting there

The castle stands above the market town of Karlštejn, about 30 km southwest of central Prague and about 9 km in a straight line from Beroun. Karlštejn railway station, on the opposite bank of the Berounka, lies on the Prague–Beroun line. The nearest airport is Václav Havel Airport Prague (PRG), about 19 km away.