Zámek Loučeň, Baroque château in Loučeň, Czech Republic

Zámek Loučeň is a Baroque château of white-walled, two-storey wings joined at an angle to a taller section with a tower capped by a dark onion dome. Its steep orange hipped roof carries small dormer windows and slender chimneys, and a low white balustrade runs along the paved courtyard at its base.

A medieval fortress first recorded in 1223 stood here until Karel Arnošt of Valdštejn rebuilt it as a Baroque château between 1704 and 1713. The Thurn und Taxis family held it from 1809 until the Second World War; after 1949 it belonged to the Ministry of Defence and served as a barracks during the Cold War.

Guided tours are led by costumed guides playing a chamberlain, a castellan or a princess, and the exhibition traces the Waldstein, Fürstenberg and Thurn und Taxis families, centred on Alexander von Thurn und Taxis, who died in 1939. Marie von Thurn und Taxis kept a salon here that drew Rainer Maria Rilke and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

The château stands in Loučeň, Nymburk district, about 50 km east of Prague. The interiors reopened to the public on 7 July 2007 after reconstruction carried out from 2000 to 2007. The English park holds the Labyrintarium with 11 labyrinths and mazes, plus ponds, fountains, a rope centre and an amphitheatre.

The park's Labyrintarium holds eleven labyrinths and mazes, not twelve, laid out among ponds, fountains and a rope centre. It was created during the 2000–2007 reconstruction of the château and its English landscape park.