This passage-way castle, with its two opposite gates and deep moat, was founded by the Vitkovec Family in the second half of the 13th century. The town walls were adjacent to the castle wall and protected the inhabitants of the surrounding town. Under the reign of the Rožmberks, the strong castle tower was struck by lightning and damaged by an explosion of gunpowder. With the contribution of Italian builder Antonio Canevalle, the castle was repaired under the reign of the last member of the Rožmberk Family, Petr Vok. In 1620, the Nové Hrady Castle was acquired by Earl Karel Bonaventura Bucquoy, to whose family the dominion belonged until 1945. After completion of the Classicist chateau in 1806, the old castle only served to administer the domain and gradually deteriorated. In the 1980’s, the castle went through an extensive reconstruction. It currently off ers a tour around the Bucquoy interiors with a number of family portraits and reminders of the war glory of this family. The tour around the suites of a noble offi cer illustrates the bourgeois way of life at the turn of the 19th and 20th century and is open all year round. A natural landscape park called Theresa’s Valley (Terčino údolí) spreads out below the castle with romantic buildings and an artifi cial waterfall.
Attraction:
In Nové Hrady you can see one of the greatest built moats to be found at Czech castles. The height of the castle ditch wall goes from 9.5 to 15 meters. The outer side of the moat measures
373 m, while the inner part is almost 100 meters shorter. Although the castle reinforcement, including the moat, started to lose its military signifi cance in the 17th century, the ditch was continuously maintained and used for utilitarian purposes, for example to breed deer and fallow.