Kroměříž Castle
Gardens and Castle at Kroměříž | |
---|---|
Name as inscribed on the World Heritage List | |
This medieval tower of the Kroměříž Castle was capped by a decorative drum and spire during the Baroque renovation in the 17th century. | |
Type | Cultural |
Criteria | ii, iv |
Reference | 860 |
UNESCO region | Europe and North America |
Inscription history | |
Inscription | 1998 (22nd Session) |
The Kroměříž Castle (Czech: Zámek Kroměříž or Arcibiskupský zámek, German: Schloss Kremsier) in Kroměříž, Czech Republic, used to be the principal residence of the bishops and (since 1777) archbishops of Olomouc.
History
The first residence on the site was founded by bishop Stanislas Thurzo in 1497. The building was in a Late Gothic style, with a modicum of Renaissance detail. During the Thirty Years' War, the castle was sacked by the Swedish army (1643).
It was not until 1664 that a bishop from the powerful Liechtenstein family charged architect Filiberto Lucchese with renovating the palace in a Baroque style. The chief monument of Lucchese's work in Kroměříž is the Pleasure Garden in front of the castle. Upon Lucchese's death in 1666, Giovanni Pietro Tencalla completed his work on the formal garden and had the palace rebuilt in a style reminiscent of the Turinese school to which he belonged.
After the castle was gutted by a major fire in March 1752, Bishop Hamilton commissioned two leading imperial artists, Franz Anton Maulbertsch and Josef Stern, arrived at the residence in order to decorate the halls of the palace with their works. In addition to their paintings, the palace still houses an art collection, generally considered the second finest in the country, which includes Titian's last mythological painting, The Flaying of Marsyas. The largest part of the collection was acquired by Bishop Karel in Cologne in 1673. The palace also contains an outstanding musical archive and a library of 33,000 volumes.
Architecture
UNESCO lists the palace and garden among the World Heritage Sites. As the nomination dossier explains, "the castle is a good but not outstanding example of a type of aristocratic or princely residence that has survived widely in Europe. The Pleasure Garden, by contrast, is a very rare and largely intact example of a Baroque garden".[1] Apart from the formal parterres there is also a less formal nineteenth-century English garden, which sustained damage during floods in 1997.
Interiors of the palace were extensively used by Miloš Forman as a stand-in for Vienna's Hofburg Imperial Palace during filming of Amadeus (1984), based on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who actually never visited Kroměříž. The main audience chamber was also used in the film Immortal Beloved (1994), in the piano concerto scene.
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kroměříž Archbishop's Palace. |
- Photographs of Kroměříž Castle
- QTVR virtual tour of Kromeriz
- unofficial pages of Kroměříž Castle and gardens
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles containing Czech-language text
- Articles containing German-language text
- Commons category link is locally defined
- World Heritage Sites in the Czech Republic
- Buildings and structures completed in 1497
- Houses completed in the 15th century
- Houses completed in the 17th century
- Castles in the Czech Republic
- Palaces in the Czech Republic
- Kroměříž District
- Episcopal palaces
- Baroque palaces
- Castles in the Zlín Region
- National Cultural Monuments of the Czech Republic