Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape

This site was recognized as one of the worst WHS at all by our community. Well, I am afraid that every single year more and more candidates for this title are continuously inscribed. Maybe it sounds strange to foreigners, believe or not, but the Lednice-Valtice cultural landscape is recognized and admired as a true national treasure by most of Czechs. In times before 1989, this place was one of the few, where one could feel an aristocratic flair of former Hapsburg Empire. The borders were tightly shut and there was no chance to go to nearby Schonbrunn in Vienna.

As almost every cultural landscape, it is difficult to understand its OUV. The castles in Valtice and Lednice only partly express it. Personally, I can see it in a combination of rather small structures and buildings (such as Rybniční Zámeček, the Pond Maison, close to Lednice ponds – PHOTO) within the large slightly undulating landscape penetrated by lakes, ponds and set of canals of Dyje River.

Lednice castle with its Minaret in the park is the most famous part of this ensemble for most of Czech locals, and the same is true also for some smaller structures such as Temple of Apollo located close to the popular lake for swimming and relaxing during summer heats. In contrast, Valtice castle is better know for its viticulture and wine exhibition in the basement of the castle.

Relatively recently, I visited Pohansko and Lány component, which is close to the town …

I visited both locations of this WHS in Summer 2019. Having read previous reviews and some chunks of the nomination dossier, I decided to combine both these locations and the flower garden in Kromeriz as a full day trip of pleasure gardens and flower gardens if the weather was sunny or a full day trip of castle interiors if the weather was wet. I was lucky weather-wise and so I was very happy not to endure yet another bunch of castle interiors.

The location of both Valtice and Lednice close to Vienna, Austria and Bratislava, Slovakia doesn't help this WHS. Quantitively it definitely helps, as most visitors are groups from both capital cities, but most will regard them as secondary sites when compared to Schonbrunn or Belvedere for example. I started with Valtice on purpose as I knew I would be passing through Lednice afterwards. Having visited them both now, I'd definitely recommend this approach as the Valtice cultural landscape outdoors has less to offer than Lednice in my opinion.

In Valtice, several late Baroque statues were moved from North Moravia in the early 20th century, in line with the general sense of neo-baroque garden reconstructions. Neptune's fountain neatly tucked away next to a minor car park is a clear example. Valtice also has its own 'viticultural educational route' so I gladly educated myself at the chateau cellar built in 1430, which contains some 8000 wooden barrels for the production of red wine. This was the 'highlight' of …

What is the ‘worst’ WHS? According to the ranking of most popular sites on this website, Kuk in PNG is currently rated the lowest among our community members - although it has only 1 vote and few have been there at all. Among the more frequently visited ones, Battir and Srebarna stand out negatively. Well – regarding the WHS visited by me I have just reached an all-time low: I gave Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape a 3 out of 10, which in my personal conversion table translates to 1 star. Even less than the little inspiring Srebarna where I was a month ago….

Last Sunday I spent an hour at the castle and garden of Valtice. I did so after having driven up from Lednice right across the cultural landscape that connects these two estates/towns, where the Liechtenstein family united baroque architecture with English landscape architecture. That it was a ‘bad’ WHS visit for me shows in several ways:

The number of photos: I took 23 in total of Valtice, of which 9 made it into my Flickr album which I use as a backup for the photos that I like to keep. At Valtice there is just little that captures your eye. My personal record at the other end of the spectrum by the way is for Machu Picchu, where I took over 400 photos in a single visit!

I cannot see its OUV: Lednice-Valtice’s OUV statement is full of hollow phrases, such as “bringing together in …

While I was planning my trip to Eastern Czechia, I was fed up to note that at least three palaces were on World Heritage List, Litomysl, Kromeriz and Lednice-Valtice, and I determined that to escape from this noble bombardment, only exterior of these palaces were enough for me. From Brno, it was just an easy drive to reach large landscape of Lednice-Valtice. I directly drove pass Lednice to the town of Valtice first. There was a straight road connecting these two towns, at first I expected to see beautiful landscape similar to Loire Valley or Versailles since many reviewers praised its beauty, but what I saw was an uninspired area of typical vineyards, dense forest and modern villages that I hardly believed to a fine example of man-made landscape, I did make a detour to see some famous follies along the lake shore; for example, Temple of three graces, but again nothing special which made me disappointed greatly.

However, when I reached Valtice, I was impressed with its townscape with lovely and harmoniously buildings. The star of this pretty town was its castle, while overall architecture was quite boring with typical Austrian baroque that could be found everywhere in former Austro-Hungarian territory, its front courtyard with stately stairs and two sculpture was perfectly designed, and I did a quick look at the castle’s chapel, its ceiling was just beautiful. Then I drove back to Lednice Castle, the main estate of Liechtenstein family of this domain. Its yellowish gothic exterior …

We visited this site on a trip from Bratislava on 8th June 2014. (Day 3 of our trip). For the full story, but also the gallery of photo's please see the webblog: www.christravelblog.com/czech-republic-lednice-valtice-cultural-landscape-2014-06-08/

Day 3 – Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape

We visited this UNESCO World Heritage Site in a day trip from Bratislava. We started at the Valtice castle and we were there like 10:15 AM, tours started each full hour so we had 45 minutes to check around the castle and have a drink. It would have been better to catch the 10 AM tour as we later found at we got into a small hurry. What we liked (on all things in this area) is that you can pay a few euro to be able to make photo’s inside. We did this of course and it was funny that people who did not pay got warnings for making photo’s and we could openly photograph all without problem :-) All the small sights we kind of just drove too; this was not really the intention of the roads as most people explore all on bicycles; but at the end of the day we got into shortage of time so we just drove over the small (sometimes unpaved) roads – this was after 5PM and there was not many people but we did get looked at a few times.

The whole area is a landscape made during the 17th century throughout the 19th century by the Liechtenstein Royal Family. The two …

The Lednice-Valtice cultural landscape is a large, man-made landscape designed by the Liechtenstein family according to the principles of the English landscape architecture. To call it just a park would be an understatement. The main sites are the two castles in Lednice and Valtice, about 10 km apart, but the core zone also includes about 15 small buildings: small castles, temple, colonnades, a minaret, etc. Some of them are open to the public.

We arrived at Lednice on a Monday morning, thus the question if we should take a guided tour to the castle didn't arise (like almost everywhere in Europe guided tours are not available on Mondays). Furthermore, it was a sunny, warm day, so we decided to rent bikes (in Lednice) and to explore the landscape. We cycled the whole day through forests and around ponds and we visited almost all of the small buildings in the area, only Pohanska and Lany were too far away. We have enjoyed our bike tour very much. The routes between the buildings are partially bumpy dirt roads, thus the best is to rent a mountain bike. The terrain is flat almost everywhere, only the route to the Colonnades south-west of Valtice goes uphill through the vineyards. But the effort is worthwhile, it is one of the most beautiful buildings of the WHS. We also liked the Minaret, the Three Graces and the Apollo Temple. Most of the buildings are in good condition, it seems that there have been some restorations since …

This site had been a thorn in my side for a few years. 3 previous attempts to visit were abandoned, and it sat there taunting me for not 'completing' all the WHS in the Czech Republic. However a trip between Olomouc and Vienna in early 2012 provided me with a great opportunity to finally 'tick it off'.

My first stop was Valtice, a rather pleasant small town with a monumental palace. Most of the things in the city centre and in the castle grounds were closed this early in the year. This fortunately spared me a tour around the palace interior. I've seen enough Central European dancing parlours, tapestries and chandeliers to last several lifetimes, so I was exceptionally happy to find a locked door to the ticket hall (it may just have been a little stiff to open, but I really didn't want to have a look around).

Instead I headed down into the cellars of the palace that now provide a home to the Czech national wine institute. And I had a lovely time walking around looking at and sampling the massive selection of wines and exploring a different part of the castle’s architecture. The surrounding landscape is actually the centre of the Czech wine industry, and whilst it is not as well developed as many other wine regions in Europe it does produce some great quality affordable wines. My recommendation would be to try some of the locally produced Veltlínské zelené (aka Grüner Veltliner) or if …

The cultural landscape around the southern Moravian castles of Lednice (Eisgrub) and Valtice (Feldsberg) is one of Europe's largest, the product of centuries of care by the Liechtenstein family. Both castles are very nice - at least from the outside, since you had to take a guided tour to see them, and these were evidently only in Czech... Anyway, the gardens and ponds are really very nice for a relaxing stroll and going there makes a great daytrip from Vienna (only about an hour or so by train).

I have been many times in this beautiful landscape, which in reality is a huge park in Baroque and English romantic style (200 sq. km) created between the 17th and the 20th century by dukes of Liechtenstein and projected by Bernard Petri and Josef van der Schot. The castle of Valtice was the Liechtensteins’ residence, a masterpiece of Baroque architecture (originally in Renaissance and Mannerist styles), projected by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Giovan Giacomo Tencalla, Giovanni Battista Carlone, Domenico Martinelli and Anton Johann Ospel, with rooms containing the original furniture and paintings, the theatre and the chapel. Very interesting is also the town centre with a big square, the church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, the church of St. Augustine with the convent, the Column of the Virgin, a fountain, the old hospital, the Franciscan convent, a gate, the town hall and the Chapel of St. Joseph. The castle of Lednice is a neo-classical and neo-Gothic building (originally in Renaissance and Baroque style), projected in the centuries by Tencalla, Carlone, Giovanni Maria Filippi and Joseph Kornhäusel, with rooms in Tudor style, a huge glasshouse and stables projected by Fischer von Erlach. In the Lednice - Valtice park are a lot of ponds created by the river Dyje and native and exotic trees. The greatest variety of them (different for form, height and colours) is around the two main residences and along the banks of the ponds; there are also copses and individual trees around and within the …

The Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape is sometimes described as "the pearl of South Moravia' and even if the two castles - once the domains by the Dukes of Lichtenstein - are impressing, its is the parks, the forests and the landscape that strikes you the most.

A gigantic English park surrounds the Lednice castle, filled with lakes, rivers and fanciful buildings like artificial ruins - temples, walls and sculptures that surprise you as you stroll through the park. The small river Thaya flows gently through the landscape and on a warm summer day there is nothing better than to spend a couple of hours on a small river boats from where you have one the best views over this splendid central European river and forest landscape.

The Lednice-Valtice landscape takes days to visit and though if I've read several different figures on the size of it, it is recommendable to rent yourself a bike if you want to see as much as possible. It's a place that I will remember for long and recommend to fellow travelers.