Břecštejn, Castle ruin in Hrádeček, Czech Republic

Břecštejn is a ruin of a rock castle on a wooded, steep rocky knoll above the valley of the Silbersteiner Bach, east above the settlement Hrádeček. Its core is a castle with a shield wall (plášťová zeď): a massive rampart enclosed all the buildings, and of the palace only the ground level with a barrel vault survives. A cellar is cut into the rock in the courtyard, and two ramparts and ditches protected the approach.

Břecštejn was founded in the first half of the 15th century, probably in the 1420s by Jan I. Zilvár, and is first documented in 1455 in the Trutnov fief registers, where Mikuláš Zilvár is named as resident. In 1522 Adam Zilvár had the castle released from fiefdom by King Louis II, and in 1532 it was renamed Silberstein. After the Zilvárs moved to Vlčice it fell into decay, was ruined by Swedish troops in the 1630s and was described as deserted by 1675.

The name Břecštejn likely derives from břečťan, the Czech word for ivy, which covered the ruin until 1794 and still grows there; an alternative theory links it to prkenný hrad, a wooden castle. From 1532 the Zilvár family used the name Silberstein, preserved as Zilvarštejn on Jan Silber's epitaph in Dvůr Králové nad Labem.

A blue-marked hiking trail leads to the ruin from Trutnov. The castle core stands on a steep rock outcrop reached through a non-original entrance, and the cellar is cut into the rock in the courtyard. The route to the outer bailey is not documented.

The chronicler Simon Hüttel claimed in his 1593 genealogy of the Silber family that Wolf Ulstadt-Silber founded Brzeczstein in 1056; the charter record contradicts this, since the forest there was settled only in the 13th century by the Moravian lords of Schwabenitz.