Mnichovo Hradiště Castle, Baroque château in Mnichovo Hradiště, Czech Republic

Mnichovo Hradiště Castle is a Baroque complex located beside the Jizera River with stables, a riding school, carriage house, and salla terrena forming a complete ensemble. All these structures together create the picture of how a noble household operated and maintained itself.

Václav Budovec had a two-winged Renaissance château built here in 1603–1606, not a fortress. After his execution in 1621, Albrecht von Wallenstein bought the estate in 1623 and passed it to his cousin Maximilian in 1627. From 1697 to 1703 Marcantonio Canevalle rebuilt it as a three-winged Baroque residence for Ernst Josef von Waldstein.

The picture gallery holds portraits of the Valdštejn family and landscape paintings, alongside Delft faience, porcelain and ceramics from the Orient and Europe. The castle library, founded at Duchcov in the second half of the 17th century and moved here in 1921, keeps 33 incunabula and 239 manuscripts.

The castle is managed by the National Heritage Institute and opened to the public as a museum in 1946. The former Capuchin convent church and the Chapel of St. Anne house a lapidarium of Baroque statues since 1966. Wallenstein's remains lie in the chapel beneath a modern grave slab carved by Karel Kolaczek in 1933.

The 1833 meeting of the Austrian emperor, Russian tsar and Prussian crown prince lasted three weeks that September and produced an agreement renewing the Holy Alliance. For the occasion the two-storey Baroque ballroom was converted into a castle theatre.