Mníšek pod Brdy and Svinaře Chateaux

Unlike last week, we had beautiful weather during our trip this weekend (after all, I only started seriously entertaining the idea of going anywhere after I was almost certain the skies would stay as blue as they had turned around noon). Choosing a destination was almost as difficult as getting there, as the castles and chateaux worth seeing that I have not yet seen are increasingly more difficult to find and increasingly far away from where I live. Mníšek pod Brdy was a whole forty minutes by car, but the picturesque neoclassical chateau was worth it, as was the somewhat dilapidated chateaux in Svinaře that we visited on our way back.

The chateau Mníšek pod Brdy started out in the fourteenth century as a castle, but it was left in ruins after being raided by the Swedes during the Thirty Years’ War. Later, Mníšek pod Brdy was bought by a new owner, who converted it into a chateau. The chateau Svinaře was built in the eighteenth century. Under the ownership of the von Kahlers in the twentieth century, it was visited by famous personages like Franz Werfel, Max Brod, and Willi Nowak. The Kahlers, who were Jewish, had to flee Czechoslovakia during the Second World War, never to gain ownership of the chateau again. 

The Church of Saint Wenceslas in Mníšek pod Brdy
The church dates back to the fourteenth century and was destroyed by the Swedes in the seventeenth
The same church again
Ibid.
Ibid.
A tower belonging to the Mníšek pod Brdy Chateau 
The Mníšek pod Brdy Chateau
Ibid. 
More of the same. The ball held by the lion makes me wonder whether this feature was imported to European architecture from China.
More of the same.
More of the same.
Back to the church
Svinaře
Svinaře again
Svinaře yet again

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