Sychrov Castle is a castle in the Neo-Gothic style of the 19th century whose history goes back to a late medieval fortress and which was for more than a hundred years the seat of the Rohan family.
Sychrov Castle is a castle whose beginnings go back to the 15th century, when a fortress belonging to the Bohemian royal chamber stood on this site.[1]
From fortress to Baroque building
In the 16th century a stone manor house was built on the site of the fortress, and between 1690 and 1693 a small Baroque château was built here. Its builders were the knightly Lamotte of Frintropp family, a French noble house whose members acquired Bohemian estates as a reward for military service to the Habsburg emperor during the Thirty Years’ War.[1]
In 1740 the estate was bought by František of Waldstein from the Mnichovo Hradiště branch of the family. Because the Waldsteins resided at Mnichovo Hradiště, Sychrov ceased to be the permanent seat of the lords and for almost eighty years served economic purposes and as housing for servants.[1]
The Rohan era
On 30 August 1820 Prince Charles Alain Gabriel Rohan became the new owner of the Sychrov and Svijany estates. This date began a period of one hundred and twenty-five years during which the castle belonged to the Rohan family.[1]
The Rohan family came from Brittany, where its earliest mention dates from 951. Over the centuries the Rohans ranked among the ten most influential noble houses in France and, as direct relatives of the French kings, gained the title of princes of the blood. After the French Revolution they left France and settled in the Habsburg monarchy, where, unlike other émigrés, they stayed even after the fall of Napoleon and during the Bourbon Restoration, although they had been expressly invited to return.[1]
Empire-style and Neo-Gothic reconstruction
Under the first Rohan owner, Prince Charles Alain Gabriel Rohan, the castle was rebuilt in the Empire style, completed in 1834.[1]
Further building development continued under Prince Camille Joseph Philippe Idesbald Rohan. Between 1847 and 1862 the castle received its Neo-Gothic form to a design by Bernard Grueber, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, which, according to the source, places Sychrov among the monuments of 19th-century historicist styles comparable to Hluboká nad Vltavou, Hrádek u Nechanic or Lednice.[1]
Only domestic artists and craftsmen took part in the reconstruction. The source mentions the woodcarver Petr Bušek, to whom it ascribes the artistic value of the castle’s interiors, as well as the sculptors Emanuel Max and Vincenc Smolík, the upholsterer Ludvík Grein, the joiner Petr König and the blacksmith Jan Novák.[1]
Castle park
Prince Camille Rohan also devoted attention to the English-style castle park, which flourished during his lifetime and, according to the source, became a model for the creation of later arboreta such as Průhonice or Konopiště Castle. In this period, according to the same source, harmony was achieved between the exterior of the castle, its interiors and the park.[1]
Administration
On the source’s page the castle is designated as the state castle Sychrov, whose history is published by the National Heritage Institute.[1]