Case study: The Battle for Jezeří Chateau: Difference between revisions

The main longitudinal building with its four perpendicularly adjacent wings formed an H-shaped ground plan, with the hall buttress coming out of the southern side. In front of the main frontispiece with a shallow central buttress ending in a prismatic tower, there was the court of honour. At each side of the main portal there are atlantes by Jan Adam Dietz from the mid-1800s.

As Ferdinand Vilém had no male heirs, he bequeathed his estate to his brother Oldřích Felix, who took over after his tragic death. On 25 September 1713 there was another fire at the chateau. Oldřich Felix, who had gone hunting that day, returned to see the building ablaze – the fire had spread so much by then that it could not be extinguished. Thanks to the committee sent by the hetman of Žatec to ascertain the damage, we now know how some of the rooms at Jezeří had looked before the fire and we can tell that the chateau already had the outer shape it has today. Unlike its renaissance predecessor, which had a tiled roof, this one only had shingles. On the middle floor there was a “new, spacious and beautiful ballroom with an oval, stucco-decorated vault, with huge columns and mascarons which took a group of ten masons, two stuccoworkers and six carpenters a whole summer to complete”. The room had nine windows and the damage inflicted by the fire was worth at least 4500 guldens. The adjacent room, by the “new dining hall”, with stuccoed ceiling and a beautiful floor was also completely destroyed (damage worth 388 guldens); another of the long list of destroyed rooms had been painted „al fresco“ (damage amounted to 350 guldens), and the alcove had a stuccoed ceiling and a valuable floor, too (350 guldens). In two adjacent rooms the fire also ruined frescoes, stuccoes and floors and its heat melted two beautiful tile stoves. In the great dining hall next to the chapel, decorated with stuccoes, a big green tiled stove was destroyed as well as a double door made of oak (damage worth 400 guldens), the fire also devoured the red room next to the dining hall, and the room next to that, a gilded study with stuccoes and frescoes on the ceiling, and another alcove (1400 guldens in total). The main helical staircase was destroyed as well as the old and the new towers with their little chambers, the “forest room” and the painted chamber, the kitchen with its foreroom, Count Lobkowicz’s painted rooms, four offices, a closet as well as a great hall above the dining room with a beautiful ceiling and floor, four capuccin rooms and another office. The fire did not spare the middle tower with a clock and two bells either, nor two dormers. A separate building below the chateau with six rooms, three closets and a laundrette was burned to the ground. The orangery, the lathe workshop, the new sawmill and other well-documented rooms and space also turned to ashes. The total damage soared to 30,398 guldens, 19 kreutzers and 3 denari.