Kynžvart Castle is a neoclassical palace. After extensive renovations, the castle was reopened to the public in 2000. A guided tour takes visitors through 25 rooms of the castle.
The first castle, built before 1600, collapsed. After the Battle of White Mountain during the Thirty Years' War, the remains of the castle were confiscated and by 1630 granted to the Metternich family. From 1682 to 1691, Count Philipp Emmerich von Metternich turned the decayed ruins into a Baroque residence. From 1821 to 1836, the Austrian Chancellor Klemens Wenzel von Metternich remodeled the building in the neoclassical style with the help of architect Pietro Nobile.
The castle was confiscated from the Metternich family in 1945 by the Czechoslovak government.
The castle has a library that includes over 200 examples of incunabula, medieval manuscripts, valuable prints, scientific books, and scientific encyclopedias. In 1828, a museum was founded to display the castle's natural science collections, coins, historical and technological curiosities, manuscripts, ancient Egyptian monuments, marble sculptures, and pieces of Oriental art.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).