Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape – a UNESCO World Heritage Site

The Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape is one of the prettiest regions you can visit in the Czech Republic. From the 15th century it was created, expanded and upkept until the mid 20th century by one of the richest families in Europe. Today it is maintained by Czech National Heritage Institute, which has made the entire complex and even the castles available to the public.

Overview of the Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape

• History of the UNESCO World Heritage Site – Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape
• Lednice
  • Lednice Castle
  • Lednice Castle Gardens
  • Lednice Dávná
  • Lednice Torture Museum
• Valtice
  • Valtice Palace
  • Kolonada Reistna
  • Chateau Valtice

History of the UNESCO World Heritage Site – Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape

The area between Lednice and Valtice, a staggering 200 km², was created as an artificial landscape from the 17th to the 20th century. The areas in southern Moravia belonged to the Dukes of Lichtenstein (one of the three richest families in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy) from the mid 13th century to the end of the 20th century.

The area mixes Baroque architecture, classical and neo-Gothic style architecture as well as the English romantic principles of landscape architecture. In 1996 the Lednice-Valtice Area was listed by UNESCO as a World Cultural and Natural Heritage Site.

“The Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape is an outstanding artistic creation that succeeds in bringing together in harmony cultural monuments from successive periods and both indigenous and exotic natural elements to create an outstanding work of human creativity.”

Lednice

The village of Lednice has some 2200 inhabitants today. It came into the hands of the Lichtenstein family in the mid. 1200s (while it was still called Eisgrub = ice pit) and was part of their main estates until the 20th century.

Lednice Castle

The Lednice Castle as we can see it today began as a Renaissance villa under the ownership of the Lichtenstein family around 1570 and was progressively changed and remodelled to reflect Baroque, Classical and Neo-Gothic fashions. The 1850 “Gothic Revival remodelling” changed the house to the one we can visit today. According to the leaflet they give you when you join a tour it was this remodel that brought the castle “into harmony with the prevailing Romanticism of this part of the landscape”.

The tour starts in the entrance hall, with is dominated by a self-supporting wooden staircase, a massive golden chandelier (it weights 690kg and is 15 meters long!) and portraits of the Lichtenstein princes up on the wall. These three portraits are the only ones that survived from the ancestral gallery.

Following the entrance hall is a antler-decorated hallway with vaulted ceilings that leads to a hunting room and a bathroom from the mid 19th century. The toilet (which has the form of a fish, with it’s mouth turned up) is one of only two that survived to this day.

After a few more rooms, among which are bedrooms, collection rooms and sitting rooms the next stop is the knights hall (first picture), which supposedly emulates a greathall from the middle ages, but in a romantic style. The brass chandeliers are equipped with candles, even though electricity was installed in the château in 1903. The figures on the wall are facsimiles of knights armour, only one is real – the one with the pointed shoes.

The red smoking hall has a wooden ceiling decorated with twelve coats of arms (six on each side) which were related to the Lichtenstein family. A glass door connects the lounge with the largest of the greenhouses (92 meters long, 13m wide and 10 meters high), which houses about 250 different plants.

The turquoise room (these places really have a penchant to just call the rooms by their wall colour, but if you have several “sitting rooms” you have to distinguish them by something, I guess) is the only place in the castle where you can still see the original wallpaper made from suede leather. Originally they were a lot more green than they are today (zoom in above the door behind the table). Since the coat of arms of the Lichtenstein family features two eagles the eagle is a recurring motif all over their former properties. Two more things to note inside this room are the intricately decorated ceiling, made from walnut, and the floor covered with inlaid parquet flooring, which is mostly covered by an ugly carpet today to protect it from all the visitors.

After around an hour the tour ends in the blue music hall, the largest room in the château. Musicians played in the corners of the room while the middle was used for dancing. The hall is filled to the brim with furnishings, paintings and trinkets from different northern and eastern European cultures, all brought into existence by master craftsmen. And once again the ceiling has to be pointed out specifically, since it is one of the best Neogothic ceilings in Europe, made from lindenwood.

Lednice Castle Gardens

The park of the Lednice country house was designed in an English garden style. It includes several architectural buildings: small temples, hunting castles, an arch, a 60 meter high Minaret, greenhouses and other minor structures, like fountains in a Romantic style. The park also includes an artificial lake with 16 small islands.

Lednice Dávná

The museum of “Old Lednice” is a local history museum that depicts the environment of Lednice from 1917 to 1935, while Czechoslovakia was still a young democratic republic (today the Czech call it First Republic) under its first president Tomáš Masaryk.

It is not a traditional museum, but rather a space that is set up like a street from a hundred years ago. You enter through a place that is set up to be a median household. On the “street” that follows are a cafe, a barbershop, a tailor’s shop, etc.

Lednice Torture Museum

The Museum of Torture Instruments and Torture in Lednice is a short walk away from the castle grounds. It is a private owned collection of genuine and replicated torture instruments from 500 B.C. until the 20th century. The instruments are accompanied by drawings or photographs of how they were used and some written explanations are given how and when certain equipment was used (ask for the English translation at the entrance), so it is definitely not a museum for the faint hearted or previously traumatised.

The exhibits are mostly from Europe, with some from South-East Asia and others from European Colonies over the centuries. An executioners sword (the actual one) from Lednice is also included in the museum and one of the few things that is stored in a glass case.

Some people might find this kind of exhibition macabre, but in my opinion it is important to remind ourselves how cruel humans can be and have been. It is on us to make sure some of these things will never be repeated and to speak up when they are.

Valtice

The town of Valtice has some 3600 inhabitants today. The Lichtenstein family slowly bought up parts of the estate in the late decades of the 1300s (while it was still called Feldberg). In the 1400s the town was pillaged, burned down and almost erased by several wars. It was eventually rebuilt in the 16th century and since then it was part of the main Lichtenstein estates – until the 20th century. However even that didn’t save the town from being sacked and destroyed several times more until the late 1700s.

Feldberg was part of Lower Austria until the end of WWI when it was annexed by the newly established Czechoslovakia and was renamed Valtice. The Liechtenstein family lived there even after the collapse of Austria-Hungary, until 1939. The town was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1938 until the end of WWII when the remaining German population was forced to leave the town and the castle was confiscated by the Czechoslovak government. Today the castle is managed by the Czech National Heritage Institute.

Valtice is also known as a centre of wine production in Moravia. The National Wine Centre and the Wine Salon of the Czech Republic reside in the Valitce Château. The Valtice Palace also has its own wine cellar, offering tastings in a royal setting.

Valtice Palace

The foundations of the Valtice Palace reach back to the middle ages, but it was remodelled several times. First in the style of the Renaissance, then Mannerist and lastly in a Baroque style which can still be seen today. The neighbouring church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is build in the same Baroque style. Both buildings dominate the scenery in the town centre.

While the palace offers several tours, the most of the inside can be seen during the grand representation tour (260 CZK ≈ 10,60€). During the tour visitors can see 20+ rooms representing how the princes lived. Once again the tour is only in Czech. If you’d want to do all of the tours it would cost a whopping 990 CZK ≈ 40,25€. You can visit the castle grounds for free, look into the inner courtyard and over the herb garden from the terrace of the Hotel Hotel Anton Florian or it’s public restaurant Zlatá Terasa located in the left wing of Valtice Palace.

Kolonáda Reistna

The arch was built in the early 1700s as both a viewing spot over the Lednice-Valtice Area and a monument to prince Jan I of Liechtensteins brother Philip and Ludwig, as well as his deceased father Franz Josef I.

Today the Colonnade on Reisten hill is a bit hard to reach. While it was a popular tourist spot in the 19th century and roads were created for horse drawn carriages to reach it, it was used by the military during the Communist era. During that time it was damaged and its restoration was only started after 1989 (after the Velvet Revolution).

Today most of it’s splendor has been restored and the view over the valley (and on good weather days even into Austria) is amazing from the rooftop terrace. Even after opening hours you can still look down the wine fields to the town of Valtice from the ground level.

Temple of Diana

The Temple of Diana (ancient greek patroness of the countryside and nature, hunters, wildlife, childbirth, crossroads, the night, and the Moon.) from 1812, is one of the other meaningful buildings in the Valice area. This four storey building in the Empire style features a three storey high arch and was used as a hunting lodge.