The History of Buštěhrad
The area of Buštěhrad was settled almost continuously over the course of millenia. The first reference to the name of the village can be found in a document by Prague Bishop Daniel in 1209, in which he mentions a farm in the village of Busczewes.
The next information appeared in the second part of the 14 century. After that, Buštěves belonged to a family of squires from Braškov and partly to the family of Rokycan, who were important Prague townspeople and who owned the nearby castle, Okoř.
Both parts of the village were integrated by the new owner, Bedřich from Ředhošť in 1416.
His son was later forced to mortgage the property, but he didn't manage to repay it. The new owner, Mr. Pešík from Stříbrná Hvězda gave Buštěves to his daughter as a dowry when she married Jindřich Lichtenštejský from Kolovrat. In this way, our village came into the hands of one of the most important aristocratic families and was held by them for two centuries. Jindřich renovated the castle. In 1497 Buštěves was declared a "royal town" by King Vladislav II.
The last member of Kolovrat family to own Buštěhrad was Mr. Zbyněk Novohradský. Mr. Novohradský took part in a dramatic rebellion of the Czech aristocracy against the reign of the Catholic king, Ferdinand II Habsburský. He welcomed the Czech Protestant sovereign Fridrich Falcký to his castle. Unfortunately, the rebellion of the Czech aristocracy suffered a crushing defeat in 1620 on Bílá Hora. Mr. Zbyněk Novohradský had to pay a big fine and died without heirs in 1630.
The Thirty Years´ War affected Buštěhrad. In May 1632, it was burned down and destroyed by the Saxon army. The castle did not survive. Hope that it would be reconstructed was dashed by extensive plague outbreaks in 1680 when all the inhabitants of Buštěhrad died.
A new period of development of Buštěhrad started under an energic and enterprising woman, Anna Marie Františka, Duchess of Sasko-Lauenburg. She started to build a chateau in 1699. The building was situated on the site of the half-ruined castle. Building modifications were stopped after the duchess' death on Oct. 15, 1741.
The next initiator of the building process was her son-in-law Klement František Bavorský.
In 1805 Ferdinand Habsburský became the new owner of Buštěhrad.
In the year 1847, the estate of Ferdinand V. Dobrotivý became part of an extensive complex of imperial estates.
Under the ownership of the Buštěhrad Imperial House until 1918, at which time it became the property of the Czechoslovak Republic.
After WW 1 and again after 1945, various national institutes used the chateau area.
During WW 2, it was used by the army.
At the end of the 1980s the chateau was assigned to the National Science Library, which used it as a base. Its aim was to repair the chateau, but these plans came to a halt due to insufficient funds. So the chateau returned to - deteriorating to a catastrophic level.
After fall of the Communist regime in 1989, the crisis intensified, as it did for other historically valuable buildings in our region. In 1992, a private company bought the chateau with plans for rebuilding it as a hotel complex. That didn´t happen and the chateau was sold to another company in 1995. The company neglected it and the dilapidation continued. Due to bankruptcy, one of their creditors asked the court for liquidation of the company's possessions. In 2003 the chateau was sold at auction to the only applicant, the city of Buštěhrad, for 2.2 million Czech crowns. Since 2003, reconstruction is in progress. The pace depends on the city's financial resources.
Translation - Andrea Postolková, Martin Pospíšil.
