Slavín
- Classification
- Château
- Pays
- Tchéquie
- Région
- Mělník
- Adresse
- Tupadly 87, 277 21 Tupadly
On the edge of a terrain terrace projecting from the valley of the Liběchovka stream in the village of Tupadly in the Mělník region stands the Romantic ensemble of the Slavín château. Originally — perhaps already at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries — the now-vanished village of Kostelec with its manor of the same name stood here. Both passed into the possession of the lords of the Liběchov estate, but fell into ruin amid the upheavals and consequences of the Thirty Years' War; only the adjacent demesne farm remained operational. In the first half of the 19th century the patriotically minded Antonín Veith became the owner of Liběchov, and he decided to demolish the farm and, on the site of the former Kostelec manor, to erect — following the model of the Valhalla at Regensburg — a pantheon celebrating Czech national mythology and history. According to designs by the Bavarian painter Wilhelm Gail, a Romantic building inspired by the Moorish style was constructed between 1836 and 1841, complemented by a tall tower with battlements. The centrepiece of the complex was a hall intended for 21 bronze statues of figures from Czech history, though only eight were ever realised. After Veith's death the completion was irreversibly postponed, and in 1873 the complex became the seat of a convent of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, while the tower was opened to the public as a viewpoint. After the Second World War the building was used for educational purposes by the national enterprise Avia Čakovice; in later years it housed the Central Research Institute of Crop Production in Prague-Ruzyně, which operated a soil science research unit on the premises.
No machine-readable author provided. Miaow Miaow assumed (based on copyright claims). (Public domain) · Public domain