According to legend, the castle Veveří (literally "squirrel's" in Czech) was founded by Přemyslid Duke Conrad of Brno in the middle of the 11th century, as a hunting lodge.

Initially, it was apparently a wooden or masonry residence situated near the Romanesque church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary west of the present compound.

In the 1220s, a stone castle on the extremity of the rocky promontory behind a deep moat cut out of the rock started to grow.

The present appearance of the compound is the result of these building activities, giving the castle its basic silhouette of a medieval fortress.

During the Hussite wars, Emperor Sigismund positioned mercenary forces of his son-in-law, Albrecht of Austria, around the castle, but he later pledged it to local nobleman Petr Kutěj in 1424.

Rudolf von Tiefenbach, an older brother of Zikmund, was a Protestant at that time, yet he remained loyal to the Catholic Emperor (and later converted to Catholicism).

As a reward for its loyalty to the Catholic emperors Tiefenbach family could keep the castle and adjacent manor even after the majority of Bohemian Protestant nobility was confiscated and expelled into exile.

Later, when the House of Sinzendorf (1707–1804) replaced this family, an extensive reconstruction was realized, and since that time, the exterior structure of the castle has remained practically unchanged.

Although he had earlier arrived in the area as a simple wayfaring traveler, he achieved prominence and wealth after establishing a cloth factory in 1780 and then successfully managing his trade.

In 1830, a Swedish émigré, Prince Gustavus Wasa, son of the deposed and exiled King of Sweden, Gustav IV, bought the castle and systematically began to rebuild it as the representative seat of his family.

During this period, he had extensive repairs and renovations completed, including a new iron water supply, roofs, and telephone connections to Obora and the manor house in the nearby town of Rosice.

At that point, Maurice de Forest inherited his adoptive father's residence in Moravia, then part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.

[citation needed]During Maurice de Forest's time as proprietor, Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine spent several days in Veveří Castle during their honeymoon journey throughout Europe in 1908.

Maurice de Forest and his family resided at Veveří Castle until 1925, when he sold it to the newly created Czechoslovak Republic (which included the territory of Moravia).

[citation needed] In 1994, Veveří Castle was again opened to the public, but in 1999, it was abruptly closed and allowed to fall into a state of disrepair during lengthy "property transfers".

Thanks to the program to protect the architectural heritage of the Ministry of Culture and extraordinary subsidies from the state budget of the city of Brno, the South Moravian Region, and voluntary collections, the worst emergency conditions were stabilized and a number of noteworthy renovations and reconstructions carried out, primarily of the palace.