The Ruins

I don´t like spending my holidays just in one place, sitting, sunbathing or whatever. I would stand it, of course, I am veeery lazy person:-) but I do not want to. I need to look over the place. I like sights of historical or nature or any other interest.

So it was the same during our latest holiday. As I wrote before, the area we spent our holiday in is full of castles. So let me introduce one of them - The Ruins. It is really the name of it. Because it is a ruin... The ruin, but very nice and recommendable.

The castle was built in the end of 14. century on (and between) two basalt hummocks. On each hummock there is a tower and between them there was the inner castle.

When castle had passed to the owner of one castle nearby in 15. centrury, it meant its end as a living place and it started to be in decline. Even it started to be a place where the highwaymen lived.

During the late Romanticism, the ruins of the castle became famous thanks to the poems and paintings they inspired. Nowadays the castle is a dominant and from-every-place-can-be-seen feature in the area.

(photo by L. Tomešek)

Nobody knows how the castle looked like in the time of its building and prosperity. There´s no evidence of it. Expect from one document saying that there was one authentic painting of the castle but it was captured by Swedish soldiers during the 30-year-war and taken to Sweden.

Nowadays the inner castle is almost disappeared and the two towers are used as the lookouts. The lower tower is 47 metres high and is called Hag. The higher tower is 57 metres high and is called Virgin (for its unavailability in the past). This is a look from Virgin tower to the inner castle and the opposite Hag tower.

To the top of Hag tower you can get by the original stone spinning stairs.

To the top of Virgin tower there is a new staircase opened in 2000. Before that there were some attempts to declassify the tower, but they were never wholly successful.

The beautiful views from the towers: