A strange silence in Konopiste

All the way south from Prague, fields of tall sunflowers turn their faces towards the autumn sun. The bus takes us through a patchwork of fields, undulating hills and, hanging on the air, the scent of cut grass. There’s very little traffic, a few geese and a few barking dogs but there are hardly any workers in the fields and not a cow in sight.

The bus pulls in to the side of the road and the driver gestures that all passengers must walk the rest of the way. There’s a signpost across the road, pointing upwards. It says “Konopiste”. It’s a fair climb up through the woods. Birch trees mostly. And in the quietness of this scenic place I begin to shiver. There is something threatening here that I can’t quite explain. I consult my guidebook and it warns of ticks in the trees – it says that they’re a common nuisance in forests from May to September. About 25 per cent of them carry Lyme disease that affects the nervous system, joints and skin. It’s August. I shiver again. I turn my collar up, pull my sunhat down over my ears and tuck the ends of my jeans into my socks. At least that is some protection against creepy crawlies. The group is way ahead of me and I speed up to try to catch up. It starts to drizzle rain.

I walk the uneven track, slipping and sliding, until I am out of breath and about to turn back when suddenly the trees thin out and there before me is a dazzling white fairytale castle, all turrets and towers. This is Konopiste. A dazzling white schloss, worthy of a Disneyland fantasy castle. I half-expect Rapunzel to swing her hair down to invite me in! There is a moat, a couple of towers, a massive grid-iron gate and a small sloping courtyard within. I shiver again as I walk towards the entrance.

The silence is stunning. So quiet, in fact, that I can hear the tinkling sound as the drizzling rain drips from the leaves of birch trees all around. I cannot shake the feeling that there is something sinister here. I feel that I am even being watched by the several sculptures of St George the dragon slayer peeping through the shrubs on the lawn. The view of the valley below is obscured by the advancing mist. The castle itself looks like it is sitting on clouds. I cross over the drawbridge into the courtyard. A ticket for the castle tour costs a lot more than any of the tourist attractions in Prague and the charge is doubled again for the English version.

I protest and I would turn away but having come so far, I decide to pay the asking price to see what has to be seen. For this is no ordinary run-of-the-mill castle. This was once the country home of an archduke, a would-be emperor and his family.

Inside, death stalks every corridor and room here. Mounted heads of dead animals, antlers, claws and teeth line each wall – you can’t get away from them – upstairs, downstairs and in every nook and cranny. A former dining hall is now a monument to further death and destruction. Guns everywhere – on walls and in glass cases – hunting weapons with highly ornate handles and engraved barrels. And there are several notebooks displayed, which meticulously record, in the archduke’s own hand, every wildlife-kill amounting to several hundred thousand woodland creatures. To say that the archduke was an obsessive hunter is putting it mildly. Upstairs the furniture and paintings are dwarfed by huge bearskin rugs on creaking polished wooden floors.

Some respite is to be found in the music salon of Princess Sophie where there are elaborate pieces of Meissen porcelain and some Dürer graphics. But an invisible pall hangs over the castle and its contents. And no wonder.

In 1914, two shots from a Browning automatic pistol fired by a 19-year-old student assassinated the owners of this schloss. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenburg, died, their blue blood staining crimson the steps of the cathedral at Sarajevo. And thus began the carnage of the first World War. This home of Franz Ferdinand and his family, this fairytale castle in Bohemia, remains to remind us, lest we forget.