Veleslavín Castle, Baroque château in Veleslavín, Czech Republic

Veleslavín Castle is a three-winged building of two storeys with an attic and cellar, its central section baroque and its side wings added in neo-baroque style around 1912. The grounds hold six masonry buildings, among them a gatehouse, three pavilions and a barn, enclosed by a wall of rough opuka stone alternating with brick.

The baroque castle was built between 1730 and 1750, probably to plans by Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer; the estate belonged to Empress Elisabeth Christine, mother of Maria Theresa. In 1763, during the Prussian siege of Prague, the Prussian command, possibly Field Marshal James Keith, was quartered here. In 1910 cousins Leo Kosák and Oskar Fischer bought it and opened a sanatorium for nervous and pulmonary diseases.

The Veleslavín name comes from the family of Štěpán Adam of Veleslavín, whose son Daniel Adam, the publisher, was born here in 1546 and took the village as his surname. In the 1890s the poet Rainer Maria Rilke was a repeated guest of the Oestéren family at the castle.

The castle is not open to visitors: in 2023 the complex stood empty and locked, owned by the Office for the Representation of the State in Property Matters. The grounds lie between Nad hradním potokem, Veleslavínská, U zámečku and Adamova streets, with Hradní potok forming the eastern boundary. In September 2024 the office announced an electronic auction for 27–28 November with a starting price of 580 million CZK; Prague 6 may match the final bid, and the city has the castle on loan until August 2025.

In 1917/18 Milena Jesenská was placed here against her will by her father to end a relationship; she later wrote about forced isolation, including that of Karl Přibram. Charlotte Garrigue Masaryková, wife of the first Czechoslovak president, lived here from 1918 and he kept his own workroom in the building.