Žacléř Castle, Renaissance castle in Žacléř, Czech Republic
Žacléř Castle stands on a densely wooded hill above the town of Žacléř. It is a two- to three-storey building on an irregular hexagonal plan, with a polygonal facade on the south side. A baroque portal with carved ornaments was created between 1730 and 1740, and pseudo-Gothic crenellated walls were built around the whole castle in 1894–1895.
A castle existed here by 1334, when it was pledged to Berthold of Leipa; Silesian dukes held it from the mid-14th century. In 1523 a punitive expedition under Karl of Münsterberg burned it down. Kryštof of Gendorf built a Renaissance château on the site in 1555; Swedes took and plundered it twice in the Thirty Years' War.
The castle is closed to the public; its owner since 2005 has been the company Castrum Scheczler, whose only partners since 2010 are Adéla and Karel Čermák. They planned a complete reconstruction into a luxury hotel with a restaurant, but later offered both the castle and the project for sale.
The castle is located in the town of Žacléř, roughly 10 kilometers north of Trutnov near the Polish border. It can be easily reached via local roads and sits in a region with good tourist facilities.
The castle stands on the site of a fortress said to have been built in 1136 under Duke Soběslav I and fortified around 1250, guarding the Trutnov Trail, a section of the old trade road from Prague through Hradec Králové and Trutnov to Silesia. The town below, then called Bornflos or Bernstadt, later took the castle's name, Schatzlar.
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