Melč Castle, Baroque and Empire château in Melč, Czech Republic

Melč Castle is a one-storey plastered Empire-style building on a rectangular plan, covered by a slate mansard roof. Its garden façade has nine window axes and a shallow two-axis risalit with a cylindrical stair tower; the north façade has twelve axes, with the entrance in the fourth, framed in wood. Most windows are plain rectangles set in splays.

Melč was first recorded in 1377 as part of the Vikštejn estate. František Filip of Hodic rebuilt the farmstead there as a Baroque château, and between 1810 and 1814 it was remodelled in the Empire style. From 1888 until the end of the Second World War it belonged to the Razumovský counts, whose coat of arms is on the façade.

The village of Melč is first documented in 1377 as part of the Vikštejn estate. The château's garden façade still bears the coat of arms of the Razumovský counts, who owned it from 1888 until the end of the Second World War. Since 1985 the building has served as a children's home.

The château is a children's home, so the building itself is not open to visitors. The park is split by a wire fence: the eastern part belongs to the home, while the western part is public and was partly restored with new plantings in the 1990s. Enter the public section through the gate in the eastern boundary wall.

The château has served as a children's home since 1985, when the special boarding school founded there in the early 20th century was transformed. Up to forty children aged three to eighteen live in five separate family flats, each with its own kitchen and living room.