Šaumburk

Shortly after 1272, the Olomouc bishop Bruno of Schauenburg had the castle built as a representative residence and named it after his ancestral castle in Lower Saxony. As early as 1275, it had its burgrave, who was Mikuláš of Choryně, and after the bishop's death, it was repaired again around 1307 and functioned as an administrative center even into the 1320s of the fourteenth century. However, by the middle of the same century, it proved too extensive and costly to maintain, and so it was replaced by the nearby Nový Šaumburk – the old castle was abandoned and has been decaying ever since. On the hill called Hrad, at an elevation of 608 meters, you can still discern the layout of the massive rectangular fortification, measuring 120 by 50 meters, the remnants of a moat about ten meters wide, and the place where a drawbridge once stood – a typical example of thirteenth-century Gothic military architecture. Since 1973, the ruins have been protected as a cultural monument, and a marked tourist trail leads to them from nearby railway stations.