It has kept its intact appearance in the Gothic and Renaissance form as it was finished in the first half of the 16th century by the Pernštejns, then the richest and most powerful lordly family of the Bohemian kingdom.

A prostrate, protruding settlement around the castle is formed by five yards, demarcated by outbuildings, ramparts, gates and a bastion in the north and barbican in the centre.

The first historically recorded ancestor of the Pernštejn family can be considered Stephen of Medlov, a significant Moravian personality from the beginning of the 13th century.

It was in the 13th century that the foundations of the new manorial power: a large property of land independent on the service to the sovereign on his favour, with servile villages and strong castles.

The sovereign's control did not reach this far, there was enough land for colonisation, forests for hunting, places for building castles and private law ruled there.

During the wild years after the extinction of the Přemyslid dynasty (1306) and during the rule of John of Bohemia (1310–1346) there are not many notes of the Pernštejn Castle and of its masters.

Not even the quieter years during the rule of Charles IV and his brother margrave John Henry could not stop the rise of the manorial power.

At that time Pernštejn was not only a centre of a large barony, but also a fortress, which played an important role in the struggle for Moravia and the city of Brno.

On the northern end there stood a tall semicircle renaissance bastion protecting the entrance to the spacious settlement around the castle with outbuildings.

Another barrier on the way toward the castle was a mighty barbican whose 3 m thick walls with crenels for light firearms and a machicolation protected a narrow way to the entrance surrounded by ramparts.

Even if the enemy got across another moat in the very area of the castle, they even would have to face the problem of conquering the only narrow entrance high above the ground to which a wooden ramp terminated by a drawbridge originally led.

He lived in the area of transition of the Czech lands from Middle Ages to Renaissance and managed to use the relative peace with his "economic" sense to a fantastic rise of the family fortune.

He strove for the unity of the Czech kingdom against the separatist tendencies of the Moravians, forewarned to encroachment of foreigners and of decline of manners.

William II of Pernštejn is considered one of the most significant personalities of the Czech history and his political activity is often compared to that of emperor Charles IV.

The Renaissance style, which was brought to Pernštejn probably by the Italians,[1] was promoted in the spatial concept of the new halls, and in the stonework on the reveals of windows and portals.

Its impregnability served well during the Thirty Years' War, specially at times of the siege of the city of Brno by the Swedish army in 1645.

The corridor between the two ramparts, characteristic of the Pernštejn fortifications, lead to the gate of the second settlement (from the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries) with Gothic-Renaissance marble portal.

During the reconstruction works on Pernštejn dozens of inscriptions (in Czech, German and Latin) and paintings dating back mostly to the mid-16th century were discovered under the passage plastering.

This unique architectural heritage has been lately conserved and made accessible to serve as a document of what the seat of prominent lords of the country looked like.