Chateau in Stará Ves nad Ondřejnicí

From far away you will be attracted by this chateau shiny decorated facade. Experts and art lovers would appreciate its style purity which makes it a jewel of renaissance architecture in the Northern Moravia and Silesia. Formerly, the residence of village owners was middle ?aged fortress. A change had been made after an arrival of a master Jaroš Syrakovský ? a seigniorial official on Hukvaldy in 1559. He had decided to build up a comfortable and a well-built family residence, typical for that renaissance period. Therefore, there was founded a three-storey chateau with almost square grand plan, with an inner small courtyard decorated with open arcades and a tower in front. The construction of the building had lasted from 1565 till 1570. Then, father's work took over his son Ctibor, a vallet of the bishop Vilém Prusinovský from Víckov and the highest scrivener of the Moravian margrave. His status and finances enabled him to finish building of the chateau in 1574-78 and essentially decorate ? in the spirit of the Italian style and apparently mostly thanks to the Italian stone-cutters and painters ? by stone interior gantries and graffito decorations. Graffito artists used a combination of a letter graffito with figurative creation. This way you can watch scenes from the Bible capturing episodes from battles with Turks and also illustrations of nobility. A lunette cornice is decorated by fresco painting.

Looks of both builders are captured by unknown stone-cutters on sandstone figural tombstones placed in a nearby Church of St. Jan Křtitel.

Since earlier 17^th c. the chateau had been owned by the Podstatský family nearly for three centuries. Around 1690 and again in 1704 it was damaged by fire. During restorations a damaged graffito decoration was overlaid by a simple rendering and a tower was tapped by an onion-shaped roof. Not until a description from 1916 which again drew attention to the formerly existing graffito rendering reappearing under a falling rendering. Building itself happened to be in a very decayed condition and above all, during liberation of the village at the end of WW II the tower with onion-shaped roof had burned down, which then had been replaced by a pyramidal roof.

Not until 1953 new building renovations started, especially of the graffito. After two other restoring treatments and construction renovations, the chateau with an adjacent park serves to the village needs with all its beauty.