Lipnice Castle

The hill above Lipnice nad Sázavou was chosen as a castle site for the same reason that most hill sites in medieval Bohemia were chosen: it was defensible, it commanded the surrounding country, and the approach from any direction involved an uphill walk that gave the defenders time and advantage. The Lichtenburk family, who founded the castle in the early 14th century, were a significant noble house in the Bohemian political landscape of the period, and they built at Lipnice on a scale appropriate to their ambitions — a complex of great hall, residential palace, gate system, and curtain walls that made Lipnice one of the most substantial Gothic castle projects of its era in Bohemia.

The castle's history across the medieval period was complex and violent. The Hussite movement of the 15th century — a religious reform and military revolt that made Bohemia the scene of some of the most sustained conflict in late medieval Central Europe — swept through the Vysočina region, and Lipnice was drawn into the fighting. The castle changed hands, was damaged, was repaired, changed hands again. The sequence of ownership that followed the Hussite period carried the castle through the 16th and 17th centuries in various states of maintenance, until it began the decline into ruin that characterises its current condition.

What remains today is substantial enough to give a clear picture of the original ambition. The Samson Tower — the best-preserved element of the fortification, named for a carved relief of Samson that decorates its exterior — rises to a height that commands the surrounding Vysočina countryside, and the view from its top is one of the better castle panoramas in the Czech Highlands: the Sázava river valley below, the rolling fields and forested hillsides stretching to the horizon, the village of Lipnice in the foreground. The great courtyard of the original complex is largely open ruin, the outlines of the vanished halls and palaces traceable in the foundations and stub walls that survive. The curtain wall circuit, partially restored and partially in its ruined state, encloses the complex.

The reason most visitors give for seeking out Lipnice, however, is literary. Jaroslav Hašek, the Czech writer who created *Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka* (The Good Soldier Švejk), moved to the village of Lipnice nad Sázavou in 1921 after years of extraordinary biographical chaos — he had lived through the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, fought on multiple sides of the Russian Civil War, married twice (simultaneously, technically), run a dog-breeding scheme, edited anarchist newspapers, and led a life of spectacular disorder. In Lipnice, he found something closer to stability. He settled in a local pub known as Na Čáslavce, established himself as part of village life, and wrote.

The Good Soldier Švejk is the satirical novel that came out of this period: a sprawling, episodic, deliberately unfinished account of Josef Švejk, an apparently simple-minded Czech soldier navigating the bureaucratic and military absurdities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the First World War. Whether Švejk's idiocy is genuine or performed is left deliberately unclear; what is clear is that the world around him is comprehensively ridiculous, and that the structures of military authority, nationalism, and official procedure are the proper objects of satire. The novel was left unfinished — Hašek died in Lipnice in January 1923 at the age of 39, with the fourth volume incomplete. He is buried in the village churchyard, a short walk from the pub where he wrote.

For readers of Švejk — and there are many, in many languages — Lipnice is a minor but genuine pilgrimage destination. A small museum in the house where Hašek lived preserves materials from his time there; the pub where he wrote is still operational. The castle above the village is the landscape backdrop for the literary visit, and stands in its own right as one of the larger Gothic castle ruins in the Czech Highlands.

The GYG private tour from Prague (t1192443) includes transport, a guide, entrance to the castle, and lunch — making it a complete day trip for visitors who want to combine the castle visit with a guide to the Hašek connection without individual logistics.

[Konopište Castle](/castles/czech-republic/konopiste-castle) — the hunting château rebuilt by Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in the late 19th century, approximately 80km northwest of Lipnice — is the major Central Bohemia château destination and the standard comparison point for visitors exploring the region.