Rájec nad Svitavou Castle, Rococo château in Rájec, Czech Republic.
Rájec nad Svitavou Castle is a grand residence with symmetrical white facades and ornate decorative details that showcase Rococo design principles. The building displays balanced proportions and carefully crafted embellishments throughout its walls and roofline.
Three medieval fortresses preceded the castle; the last was ruined by 1446. Bernard Drnovský rebuilt the site around 1570 as a four-winged Renaissance residence, destroyed by fire in 1756. In 1763 Antonín Karel Salm-Reifferscheidt bought the estate and had Isidore Canevale design the present castle, built 1763–1769.
The castle's first floor holds the Salm family painting collection, installed in the 1950s and centred on Dutch and Flemish masters. In the surrounding landscape park stand numerous cast-iron ornaments and near life-size sculptures made in the prince's own ironworks and art foundry in Blansko.
The castle stands on a hill just above Rájec-Jestřebí, about eleven kilometres northwest of Blansko. The grounds include a landscape park with cast-iron sculptures and a neo-Gothic dovecote built at the same time as the castle. The ground floor keeps its representative rooms from the last quarter of the 19th century.
The castle park holds numerous cast-iron ornaments and almost life-size sculptures made in the Fürstlich Salm ironworks and art foundry in Blansko, run by a prince open to modern technology. A neo-Gothic dovecote built at the same time as the castle stands among them.
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