Castle & ruins 12: Kost, CZ

Castle Kost (=Bone) originally had no name as it was just one of the military forts (written in chronicles as di Costi) of Beneš from Vartemberk, cupbearer of king Vaclav II (13th century).

For local people though di Costi was closest in Czech language to the word Kost and this name stayed with it for today. With years passing by the fort become bigger and stronger and very difficult to conquer – as a real bone in the throat.

The castle is built in the middle of 3 valleys, later owners filled them with water to make castle' defense stronger.

One of the valley is called Plakanek (weeping valley) and there are several legends explaining it: like some unhappy lovers died there or one desperate maid buried there her unwanted child etc, etc – and all of these miserable dead are weeping all the time and so on. Reality is more unimaginative though: there charcoal was made since always, so fumes and smoke made people weep.

The limestone in castle foundation allows for natural food and ice preserve (very important to keep your beer cold at any time!)

Castle went through many reconstructions, but luckily we still can see tower with uneven walls which help to deflect artillery blows.

It has a very cute small chapel which initially was the tallest building in the castle. But it got hit by lightning and caused fires so many times that it was rebuild to be lower and lower to become at the end a mini size.

From 17th century for today the castle belongs to Kinský dal Borgo family, it is open for public, you can see not only the building itself but as well their collection of weapons and arts.

The legend says that long ago a young man served some old Czech king at the hunt. It happened so that wolfs attacked king's daughter and brave youngster saved her from wild beasts teeth. In gratitude the king made him noble and granted the right to have a coat of arms. Boy choose to have 3 wolfs' fangs on the red field – and Kinsky family still bears it.