Orlík Castle

The history of this significant South Bohemian cultural monument began to be written in the second half of the thirteenth century, when King Přemysl Otakar II founded the original fort here, which during the reign of Charles the Fourth came permanently into noble hands. Among the most important owners were the Zmrzlík family of Svojšín, the Švamberk family, who rebuilt the seat into a castle, and subsequently the Eggenberg and Schwarzenberg families. During the Hussite Wars, it served as a Utraquist counterpart to Catholic Zvíkov, and it maintained its defensive role through the Thirty Years' War until the end of the seventeenth century, when Turkish incursions threatened. After a period of mere maintenance, in 1802 it became the residence of the Orlík branch of the Schwarzenberg family, who in the eighteen-sixties carried out the last extensive building modifications. Although the complex was nationalized for more than forty years in the twentieth century, after the Velvet Revolution it returned to Schwarzenberg ownership and still dominates the rocky promontory above the flooded valley of the Vltava River.