Castles & ruins 17: Kokořín, CZ
Castle Kokořín was built in 14th century and served well to many of its owners, usually average noble families: not so rich, not so close to the royals. After The Thirty Years' War emperor Ferdinand add Kokorin to the list of “cursed” castles – ones which should be destroyed and could not be sold and castle was crumbling into ruin.
As was usual for such cases the castle ruins become bandits nest. Kokorin had very famous one: knight Petrovsky, well known by his raids, plundering and kidnappings. It took years to destroy his band and legends about treasures the bandits hid at the castle are still around. In 1896 ruins were bought by Václav Špaček: businessmen, horse breeder and owner of the prominent post service, he reconstructed the castle to original design and open it for public. In 1950s castle was nationalized but in 2006 returned to the Spacek family, who owns it today and still keep it open for tourists.
The castle legends mostly connected to bandits' hideout times, for example: the legend of brave miller. Petrovsky band plundered area around Kokorin for years and everyone was afraid of him, so knight got used to easy robberies, but once he came to the mill farther away from the castle and was surprised by courageous resistance of miller and his men. Bandit knight had to retreat and since then was plotting revenge.
He disguised himself as rich merchant and come to the mill one day as if he lost his way. Miller welcomed him and “merchant” started to come there more often until he totally charmed miller's daughter. And one day he took her for a walk and kidnapped.
Petrovsky brought poor girl to his castle and was going to cut her hand to send to the miller, but she was her father' daughter - brave and smart, so she managed to escape at night. When she came back, miller got help of town folk and raid the castle, all bandits were killed that night and so ended fierce knight robberies.
Actually during reconstructions there were found more than 20 human skeletons in the castle's walls and dungeons, might be victims of knight cruelty (some of them are female and children), might be bandits themselves – or both.
Not all knights were taken though as it is said until today that at stormy nights the black raider goes out of the castle: he has black bow with black arrows and pack of black dogs run with him, his horse is black too. The animals breath fire, the raider is merciless to anyone he meets, but he does leave money for poor folk after he returns to the castle, all you need to do is just wait for him to be gone and check the roads he rode: there would be sack of gold coins on the tree for sure.
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