Lednice Château

Lednice Chateau (German: Eisgrub) is a neo-Gothic chateau in South Moravia, Czechia, about 45 kilometres south of Brno and 7 kilometres northwest of Břeclav. It is part of the Lednice–Valtice Cultural Landscape, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1996. The estate began as a Renaissance villa and became a Baroque summer residence of the Princes of Liechtenstein, who owned it from 1582 to 1945; from 1846 to 1858 it was extensively rebuilt in neo-Gothic style under Georg Wingelmüller.

The chateau is surrounded by an English-style landscape park with Romantic follies by Joseph Hardtmuth, including the 60-metre minaret of 1802. The French garden has a palm house and a Masonic wall; the park has an aqueduct and a Moorish water tower. Boat trips start from a jetty.

You can enter the chateau only on a guided tour. Two main tours take about 50 minutes each: the state rooms, with a wooden spiral staircase, and the family's living quarters, with a 19th-century Chinese salon. The palm house has its own tour. The World Heritage site is vast (UNESCO gives 143 or 200 square kilometres), so allow plenty of time and check tour times beforehand.