GUIDED TOURS
We look back on this year´s season. We thank our customers and visitiors and will be happy to welcome you again...
Guided tours are possible outside the main tourist season at any time by prior arrangement. Tours ordered in this way cannot normally start before 10 a.m or after 3 p.m. (For earlier or later tours a 100% supplement is charged.)
Guided tours outside the main tourist season are only possible for groups of at least 20 people.
We recommend that larger groups reserve a time for their tour in advance.
Entrance charges 2008:
· Adults: 120 Kč
· Children, students, pensioners, disabled: 80 Kč
· Out of season: 120 Kč
The life of Petr Vok in Bechyně Castle
The route followed by the tour shows the splendid construction work commissioned by Petr Vok, and the work of the Rožmberk artists and craftsmen, which represents a highpoint of Renaissance art in Bohemia. It presents Petr Vok of Rožmberk and also his marriage hall, the walls of which are covered by 460 m2 of wall paintings.
The tour starts in the first courtyard of the castle and lasts for about 50 minutes.
The route continues with a visit to the late Gothic "Tree Hall", from where it proceeds up a staircase to the west wing of the castle, which until the end of the 16th century served as the "fraucimor".*
The tour then proceeds along a corridor from the west wing to the bedroom of Petr Vok of Rožmberk with its original stucco ceiling and wall paintings, next to which is a room with a Renaissance coffered ceiling, which originally served as Rožmberk's study, but is now furnished as an armoury.
The route continues along a corridor to the hunting salon and the portrait gallery of the Paar family in an anteroom.
The tour of the castle ends in the large hall known as the Vok wedding hall with its unique wall paintings.
Mediaeval tiled stoves
Exhibition of most recent finds from Tábor. Shows the longstanding tradition of stove-building in southern Bohemia.
Hunting and farming on the Bechyně estate in the Renaissance period
Exhibition of firearms and hunting weapons, old engravings and photographs
Booking guided tours online
To book a guided tour online please continue using this link
Information for the disabled
There are approximately twenty steps leading up to the exhibition on the first floor and seven more during the tour. The castle administration is able to provide transport during the tour if you telephone us in advance.
Parking
Parking facilities for cars and buses are available on the town square approximately 300 metres from the castle.
Photography
You are only allowed to take photographs on the basis of a contract and if you pay a charge.
* Fraucimor is a term for the female part of the court, or for a separate female court, which originated from the German word Frauenzimmer (women's rooms, but already in German it also has the further meaning of the female section of a castle).
In aristocratic residences in the early modern period the word fraucimor had several meanings: all the female inhabitants of the residence without distinction of origin, status, or activity; the rooms of the high-born aristocratic ladies and their female attendants; the women and girls who lived in these rooms and provided the retinue and company for the lady of the castle; and the close female relatives of the lord of the castle or noble female visitors. The girls in the fraucimor lived at the side of the noblewomen in castles or palaces in towns, ate with them at their table, mixed with their guests, and accompanied their mistress wherever social conventions did not allow her to go alone. They were usually daughters from well-to-do families, for whom living in the fraucimor provided an opportunity for social contacts at the highest level. Maintaining a fraucimor was quite an expensive business. After a longer or shorter stay at their mistress's court, the girls found themselves a husband and it became a common custom for the lady of the house to organise on the premises the wedding for every girl from the fraucimor, which in splendour and expense corresponded to the status of the family in question.