.jpg)
Český Krumlov Castle stands on a rocky rise high above the bed of the Vltava in Český Krumlov. The complex grew out of an original Gothic castle and over the centuries was rebuilt into a Renaissance and then Baroque seat of noble families.[1]
Beginnings and the name
People had lived on the rise long before the oldest parts of the castle arose; the first settlement dates from the Bronze Age. The name Krumlov is derived from the Latin castrum Crumnau or the Old German Crumbenowe and describes the shape of the terrain, that is, a place on a crooked meadow or floodplain. The castle was probably first mentioned by the Austrian knight and minnesinger Ulrich von Liechtenstein in the poem Der Frauendienst of 1240 to 1242. The first written form of the name, Chrumbenowe, appears in a charter of Duke Otakar from 1253, when Krumlov was the seat of Vítek of Krumlov of the Vítkovci family. The epithet "Český" (Czech) has been used with Krumlov since the middle of the 15th century.[1]
The Gothic castle from which the château grew was built by the lords of Krumlov, sometime before 1250, a branch of the Vítkovci with a five-petalled rose in their coat of arms.[1]
The Rosenbergs
The lords of Krumlov died out in 1302 and the property was inherited by their relatives the Rosenbergs. During the three centuries of their rule the town and castle experienced their greatest flourishing, and the castle was then turned into a Renaissance residence. The Rosenberg rulers were among the leading figures of the Czech nobility, were humanists and patrons of culture and the arts, and held the highest offices of the land in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Under William of Rosenberg the family fell deeply into debt in the second half of the 16th century, and so his younger brother Peter Vok, the last member of the family, sold the estate to Emperor Rudolf II at the turn of 1601 and 1602.[1]
The Eggenbergs and the Schwarzenbergs
In 1622 Emperor Ferdinand II gave the royal property to Prince Johann Ulrich of Eggenberg. Only in the third generation of the family, from the 1660s, thanks to Prince Johann Christian I, did economic, building and artistic activity develop. After the Thirty Years' War the château escaped its provincial backwardness and became a representative Baroque residence.[1]
The Eggenbergs died out in 1719 without heirs, and Krumlov passed to the princely house of Schwarzenberg. Prince Joseph Adam of Schwarzenberg, an estate manager and lover of art, had the castle complex rebuilt on a grand scale. Buildings and cultural life were enriched by impulses from the culture of the imperial residence in Vienna. At the end of the 18th century and especially in the 19th century a long artistic and economic decline set in, and in the second half of the 19th century the château ceased to serve as the main seat of the Krumlov-Hluboká branch of the Schwarzenbergs. Nor was it regularly inhabited in the 20th century.[1]
Ownership in the 20th century
The Schwarzenberg property with Český Krumlov passed in 1947 into the ownership of the Czech land. After the abolition of the provincial system it passed from 1950 into the property of the Czechoslovak state.[1] The château is administered by the National Heritage Institute, the Český Krumlov State Castle and Château, whose pages on the history of the complex are the source of this article.[1]