The Renaissance building of the Blansko chateau stands on the site of the original fief court built on the Blansko estate, which was part of the fief of the bishops of Olomouc and was for centuries lent by the fief lords to vassals mainly from the ranks of the Czech and Moravian nobility. The manor house, first mentioned in written sources at the end of the 14th century, was rebuilt in the 1630s by the then owner of the manor and later bishop of Olomouc, Jan Doubravka of Hradiště, into a Gothic fortress. Bishop Jan Dubravius, the author of the famous work "On Ponds", contributed to the development of Blansko not only by building a pond between today's Horní and Dolní Lhota and the above-mentioned fortress, but also by uniting the bishop's table farm Staré Blansko and the fief farm Nové Blansko into one functional unit. A few decades later, another important owner of the Blansko dominion, the Moravian Provincial Procurator Matyáš Žalkovský of Žalkovice, started the construction of the present Renaissance chateau. It was completed in 1604 by his son Jan, the governor of the supreme scrivener of the Moravian Margraviate. Documents about life in the castle at that time are recorded by Jan's clerk Jiřík Skřivánek in the so-called Blansko Copybook, which contains an extensive set of correspondence. During the 17th century, the castle building gradually decayed under a rapid change of owners, the most famous of whom were the Lions of Rožmital. During the Thirty Years' War it was damaged by the Swedes and only in 1695 was it repaired and extended in the Baroque style by the new owner Arnošt Leopold Ferdinand of Gellhorn. Arnošt Leopold Ferdinand, a member of the Silesian Gellhorn family, built an iron hammer on the Punkva River and thus became the founder of the ironworking tradition in Blansko that still exists today. He and his wife Zuzana Terezia Eleonora, née Orlíková of Lazisko, and their sons Arnošt Julius and Antonín František lived at the chateau, their farm prospered and the profits from iron production offered hope for the development of Blansko and the whole estate. However, Gellhorn's untimely death in 1702 dashed these hopes. The widow Susanna and her sons spent considerable funds on the improvement of the Blansko church and the building of a new rectory, but the decline soon followed. In 1766, Arnošt Julius' son, Karel Josef of Gellhorn, sold the debt-ridden Blansko estate to Antonín Salm-Reifferscheidt, the owner of the neighbouring Rájec estate, who added it to his household. While the first Gellhorns lived in the castle and established a chapel in the building, where a chaplain, who was also a teacher of their children, worked, the Salms used the castle more as a summer residence, later providing accommodation for their friends and important employees of the ironworks. During the 18th and 19th centuries, many personalities lived here. For example, the Austrian scientist Baron Karl Ludwig of Reichenbach, the first wife of the later King William IV of England, and the first wife of the King of England. Karolina Meineke von Linsingen, the physician Jindřich Wankel, discoverer of the famous archaeological find in the Bull Rock and founder of the first Blansko Museum (1854), the linguist and writer Josef Dobrovský, the painter Josef Mánes, the Austrian poet Ferdinand von Saar and others. Plans for the establishment of the František Museum, today's Moravian Museum in Brno, were made within the castle walls. The castle was repaired several times during the Salmi period. The first of the repairs, probably carried out after a fire under the old Count Hugo Franz Salm-Reifferscheidt in 1818, brought a number of structural changes (roofing, new floors, excavation of new cellars, paving of the courtyard, arched canal, iron water pipes, etc.) ), and another, made by his son Hugo Karl Eduard in the mid-19th century, added a number of cast-iron elements to the castle (a three-armed staircase on the outer wall of the east wing on the park side, a spindle staircase in the south-east corner of the courtyard, etc.). Twenty years later, under the same owner, the chateau was renovated in Neo-Renaissance style. The south wing was decorated with an arched gable designed by the painter Bedřich Wachsmann, and the interiors were given a Neo-Renaissance look with wooden lining and richly decorated coffered ceilings. From the last decades of the 19th century, the building gradually declined and in the 1930s its owners used it as a dormitory and tenement house without investing the necessary funds in its maintenance. In 1936, the town of Blansko expressed an interest in buying the dilapidated castle, temporarily using it to house a new business school, and then repairing it and establishing the Regional Museum. Protracted negotiations, during which the owners demanded a higher price than the town was willing to accept, were ended by World War II. After the end of the war, the Salm family nationalised the castle in 1945, along with the rest of the property. In 1960, a general reconstruction of the chateau was started according to the plans of architect Lubor Lacina, and after its completion in 1969 the chateau was handed over to the District Museum of Local History, formerly the Blansko Museum, now the Blansko Museum. One of the permanent routes for visitors is a guided tour through the historic castle interiors, which the museum repaired, equipped with furnishings and opened in 1994. Obsah Front page Images from Moravian Switzerland Museum of Blansko Region Moravian Karst Cave divers Henry Wankel Czechoslovak Lion History of the chateau Hugo Franz Old Count Salm Olomučany pottery Archeology Treasure of silver coins The Mystery of "Býčí Skálal" Cave Princess of "Býčí Skála" Cave Funeral carriage Blansko artistic cast iron HISTORY OF THE Chateau Karl Ludwig von Reichenbach