Loket Castle, Gothic castle in Karlovy Vary Region, Czech Republic

Loket Castle is a Gothic fortress rising from a massive rock formation in western Bohemia, surrounded on three sides by the winding Ohře River. The structure blends Romanesque and Gothic architecture, featuring a medieval rotunda, several towers, and fortified walls overlooking the river bend.

Archaeological research in 2025 dated the castle's origins to the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries, when a fully stone castle was already built. The first written mention comes from 1227, and a burgrave is documented in 1234. In 1319 King John of Luxembourg had the castle occupied and his three-year-old son Wenceslas, later Charles IV, imprisoned in a dark chamber for two months.

The castle museum shows 19th-century porcelain made by the Gebrüder Haidinger factory, founded in Elbogen in 1811, bearing the mark of an armoured arm with a sword. In the former prison, used until 1948, an exhibition of penal law displays medieval torture instruments with life-size figures and sound.

Access is available seasonally from April through October, with guided tours offered in multiple languages. A parking area near the entrance makes arrival easy, and pathways through the site are well marked.

The castle houses the largest surviving fragment of the Cursed Burgrave meteorite, said to have struck the courtyard in August 1422 and once weighing about 107 kg, the size of a horse's head. Cut up in 1812, its main piece of roughly 80 kg is kept in Vienna's Natural History Museum.