I have been many times in Kroměříž, situated on a former ford on the river Morava, near the Chřiby mountains, to visit the huge Baroque castle, constructed in the 17th century for the archbishop of Olomouc Karl II von Liechtenstein-Kastelcorn on the place of an another castle and projected by Filibero Lucchese e Giovan Pietro Tencalla; it was reconstructed under Maximilian Hamilton in the 17th century, after a fire. It is a free-standing structure with four wings around a trapezoidal central court with three storeys and one attic half-storey. The ground floor is on a platform that compensates the uneven ground, originally surrounded by a moat, filled in 1832. The main facade has eleven window axes, optically prolonged by pilasters, doubled at the buttress corners, with cornice capitals. They are linked by sunken rectangular panels and this decoration is on all the facades. The other fronts have fourteen, thirteen and ten axes. The medieval tower has a drum with a spire. The Conference Hall was for two years the seat of the Austrian parlament and contains 22 venetian chandeliers, gilt allegorical stucco, paintings by Joseph Anton Adolph von Freenthal and a portrait of the arcibishop Kohn by Lászlo Folop. The Vassal Hall was the chapter tribunal and contains the archiepiscopal throne, the court stalls, coverings in false marmor, a neapolitan portrait of the cardinal Schrattenbach and a fresco on the ceiling, masterpiece of Franz Anton Maulpertsch. In the Hunting Room are 41 trophies, catched by the zar Alexander III in a hunting, and paintings. The Rococo Pink Room has venetian mirrors and paintings. In the Archibishop's Room is a beautiful intarsied Renaissance bed from Veneto, bought by the archibishop Korn, and paintings. The Zar's Room was the room of Alexander III during his visits and contains his portrait and that of the emperor Francis Joseph and his wife Elisabeth painted by Anton Eisle, a venetian table made of malachite with a wooden intarsio and a Florentin Gothic altar. In the Council Room are portraits of the archibishops of Olomouc, in the Throne Hall paintings by Orazio Gentileschi, Filippo Abbiati and Joseph Heintz, in the Large and Small Dining Rooms, decorated by von Freenthal, paintings by Karl Spitzweg, van Minderhout and Jan Čermák. The chapel has Rococo furniture, an altar in gilded wood, marmors and frescos by Joseph Stern, that made also the frescos in the library, that contains viennese furniture and 33000 manuscripts, incunabula, books and prints. The castle is linked to the garden through ground-floor rooms with grottoes, one of them reproducing a mine. The garden has many exotic coniferous and decidous species of tree arranged singly or in groups, some ponds and buildings: the semi-circular Pompeian Colonnade built in classical style to house sculptures from Pompei, the Max's Farmstead in French Empire style with a colonnade and projecting wings, the Baroque terraced Secret Garden, with the Colloredo Colonnade, with an arcaded corridor and a starcaise, the Chinese Pavilion, the Temple of the Friendship and the bridges Little Silver, Vase and Little Lantern, made of the iron from the town foundry. The Pleasure Garden in Italian style, constructed under von Liechtenstein-Kastelcorn by Lucchese and restored in the 20th century, has in its first section a 244 m long arcaded classical gallery with many statues and busts, fountains and the octagonal rotunda as the central element, with a ground floor gallery, articulated entrances, four grottoes with fountains, decorations with mithological scenes and a cilindrical drum surmonted by a dome and a lantern tower. Around it are simmetrically arranged beautiful plots with mazes and flower gardens, defined by low espalier hedges. The main elements of the second section are two low mounds with arbours and two rectangular ponds, laid out simmetrically on the main axis of the garden. There are also the aviary, built on a small island in a pond, and the greenhouses.

I liked very much the castle and the gardens, the most beautiful in Czech Republic, because of their beauty and decorations. It's worth to be visited if you are in Moravia (if you go there you can visit the castle only with guided tours) and justifies the inscription.

Photo: Kroměříž - Castle