Slatinany Chateau

This chateau is located In the town of Slatinany in the Czech Republic. The first mention of this chateau comes from the year year 1294. At  that time the chateau was owned by its very first owner,  known as Frantisek of Slatinany. But  it has not been confirmed confirmed that he was the founder of this chateau. Unclear too are the beginnings of a local fortress, which was founded later and was connected with the owner of the surrounding countryside, Zbynek of Slatinany.

It remained unchanged the second half of the fifteenth century, when Slatinany was bought piecemeal by Vítek from Talmberk. The Talmberks occupied the  local fortress in the 1469 and destroyed it  with the army of the king’s political enemy,  Zdenek Konopistsky from Sternberk. In the 1470s the Slatinany estate went to the knight Zikmund Šárovec of Šárov, whose son Václav was  a robber-knight.  From a castle nearby –Rabštejnek—he swooped rich merchant either surrounding nobles .

Earlier, before he ended up under the executioner’s sword at Prague’s Pohořelec, he had enough time to sell Slatinany to  the  rich town Chrudim. In 1547 the Chrudim town council decided to join the anti-Habsburg resistance,  for which the city was punished after the victory of the imperial government. Besides losing privileges, Chrudim lost all of its estates, which King Ferdinand I sold to his ally and one of the richest  Czech Nobles, “Jan Bohaty” (John the Rich) of Pernstejn. Pernstejn immediately sold Slatinany and Rabstejn to  a smaller Chrdim hetman, the knight Heřman Lhotský of Zasmuky.

The next change happened in 1575, when the knight Bohuslav Mazanec of Frymburk bought both parts. Bohuslav was in  1558 promoted with the coat of arms of Frymburk with his family. Three years later he became  a  knight. He wanted to build a chateau in his new estate, but due to financial reasons it never happened. Bohuslav’s son Jan Mazanec of Frymburk sold Slatinany in 1594 to Zikmund Karlik of Nezetice. His son, the next owner of the estate, Jiri Karlik, made history by actively participating in the “Estates Uprisings” after 1618. After the Battle of White Mountain his property was confiscated. Several people showed interest, but in the end it got a firm Catholic and follower of the emperor Lev Burian Berka of Duba. After this owner many owners followed – at total it was 7. The last of these is the Czech state, which has owned the castle from 1945 to the present.

For more information about the Pardubice region, from which this chateau comes, click here and here.