Litice Castle

The steep slopes of the foothills of the Orlické Mountains gave the advantage of a strategic position to the gothic castles being founded there at the close of the 13th century.

For a short span of time in the 14th century the Litice castle was owned by two Luxembourg rulers successively, John of Bohemia and Charles IV.

The turbulent times following the Hussite Wars, rife with internal conflicts between alliances of the aristocrats fighting for power in the Kingdom of Bohemia, one of the strongest being the Utraquist party of George of Poděbrady, called for essential measures to safeguard this important castle.

This was interrupted in the mid 1460s by a war caused by the Papal Court instigating the resistance of the local catholic nobility and then asking Matthias Corvinus, the King of Hungary, to intervene.

The atmosphere of the times and the prevalent bourgeois-aristocratic environment influenced the character of the architecture in the general concept of which the dying tradition of the 14th century can still be traced.

The estate, heavily in debt, was purchased from the sons of George of Poděbrady by Vilém II of Pernštejn who linked it to nearby Potštejn to where he transferred the administrative centre.

The condition of the whole building further deteriorated in subsequent decades until the new owner, the State, instituted measures to stabilize the structure and to restore the palace and its foundations.