Loket Castle (, ) is a 12th-century Gothic castle in Loket in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic. It ls located on a massive rock, surrounded on three sides by the Ohře river. Once known as "the Impregnable Castle of Bohemia", because of its thick walls, it is one of the oldest stone castles in the country. It is administered by the Loket Castle Foundation since 1993 and preserved today as a museum and national monument.
History
Loket, originally called Stein-Elbogen due to its rocky location, is said to have been founded in 870 by the margraves of Vohenburg who were then related to the dukes of Bavaria to whom the entire Elbogen districts belonged until the 12th century.
The first written mention of Loket as a town comes from a 1234 deed when the first known royal Loket burgrave was recorded. According to archeological investigations, the foundation of the stone castle dates back to the third quarter of the 12th century, during the reign of Přemysl Otakar I, either by the Czech Prince Vladislav I, later the Czech King Vladislaus II of Bohemia, or by ministerial officials to the Emperor Fridrich I Barbarosa. The old romanesque castle comprised two towers, a church and a building standing on the site of the present Margrave's House. The church stood beneath the present castle where St. Wenceslaus church is standing today. The other tower, no longer existent, stood to the north-east of the castle. Above all, the castle served as protection to the merchant's path leading from Prague through Cheb and on to Plauen and Erfurt, but after the re-annexation by the Czech state it began functioning as a frontier fortress. By this time it became the new administrative centre of the region.
By the turn of the 13th century a settlement was built around the castle walls and later raised into a royal town. From the 1250s the castle was gradually enlarged and the formerly Romanesque building turned into a Gothic stronghold which was often visited by the members of the royal family.
During the rule of Ottokar II of Bohemia
Under the rule of Přemysl Otakar II a new fortification wall with half-cylindrical towers was constructed. Queen Eliška Přemyslovna used to hide herself in the castle with her children during the upheavals against John of Luxembourg as well as to protect herself against his anger. The last time she had to hide there was in the early spring of 1319, when King John conquered the castle with a trick when he persuaded the guard to open the gate pretending a friendly visit to his wife. Queen Eliška was taken prisoner and transported to Mělník, the dowry castle of the Czech queens. Their three-year-old son Prince Václav, later Emperor and King Charles IV, was held here for two months in the underground prison, a period which he later described as a horrible imprisonment in a cellar with one tiny window. As an adult and an important European ruler, Charles IV did not come to hate Loket and often stayed there. In his unimplemented code Maiestas Carolina, he classified Loket among the places which should have stayed in permanent property of the Czech crown.
The Hussite Wars did not avoid Loket when it found itself in the hands of the supporter of the Catholic Church burgrave Půta of Illburk. The Hussite troops tried twice to conquer the castle under the leadership of Krušina of Švamberk and later under the leadership of Jakoubek of Vřesovice, but both crusades ended without success. The comprehensive restoration of the castle under Wenceslaus IV was decisive for its present form. Of the original Romanesque buildings, those preserved were mainly the extremely rare rotunda, the foundations of the castle tower and those of the northern palace. The Margave's House also originated in the reign of Wenceslaus IV.
During the rule of Sigismund of Luxemburg
The castle continued to be enlarged up to the 1420s and in 1434 it was mortgaged to chancellor Kašpar Slik by Sigismund of Luxembourg as a reward for his financial aid. Further reconstruction took place in the second half of the 15th century when the castle was turned into a representative ancestral seat under the administration of the House of Slik, which lasted for more than 100 years. It served this purpose even after the House of slik divided itself into several branches – Falknov, Jáchymov and Ostrov. Its architecture followed the spirit of the late Gothic and the new-coming Renaissance. The Sliks changed the southern palace into a great hall, and the eastern palace into the "Slik Archives". The castle suffered from being converted into a prison in the 19th century.