Although Szpilberg Castle, rising atop a picturesque hill in Brno, first made its mark in Polish history as the residence of Queen Ryksa Elisabeth (1288-1335), in the collective memory this place is mainly associated with the period of the Partitions of Poland, when around 200 Polish anti-Austrian conspirators from Galicia were held in the castle under dramatic conditions. The fame of Szpilberg as a prison was perpetuated, among others, in the literary fate of Jacek Soplica, the hero of Adam Mickiewicz's 'Pan Tadeusz'. "[...] once they led me to Siberia; then the Austrians / in Szpilberg buried me in the dungeons to work / in carcer durum...", confesses Father Robak on his deathbed.

A brief history of the castle: from royal residence to maximum security prison to museum

Szpilberg Castle was built in the second half of the 13th century as a defensive structure. Construction of the monumental castle began during the reign of Czech King Wenceslas I and was completed by his son, Přemysl Ottokar II. From a royal residence and later the ancestral residence of the Moravian margraves, the castle was transformed at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries into a Baroque citadel regarded as one of the most rigorous prisons in the Austrian Empire. Under the rule of Emperor Franz Joseph I, the castle served as a place of internment for many Polish political prisoners, including participants in the 1846 Krakow Uprising. After the liquidation of the prison after the Spring of Nations in 1848, the castle was turned into military barracks for more than a century. At the beginning of the 1960s, Špilberg Castle began a new phase in its history, becoming a branch of the Brno City Museum.

Polish traces in the castle

On the facade of the castle, in the representative corner on the north side and on the south gate, there is a Piast coat of arms with the White Eagle. The reliefs were made during the reign of Ryksa Elisabeth, second wife of Wenceslas II (1278-1305) and queen of Poland and Bohemia (she ruled from 1303 to 1335). The queen arrived in Brno in 1318. For the rest of her life, the castle was her official residence, even though she spent the last years of her life in the Brno Cistercian convent. Elisabeth Ryksa played a key role in the expansion of the city, making numerous foundations for the Christian community and sponsoring the fortification and decoration of the castle.

A marble rectangular plaque commemorating the fate of the Poles imprisoned in Szpilberg is located on the castle walls, on the south side. The golden inscription in Polish reads: "IN SZPILBERG PRISON / IN THE YEARS 1839-1848 SUFFERED / LEADING POLISH REVOLUTIONARIES / FIGHTING / FOR AN INDEPENDENT AND DEMOCRATIC POLAND / HONOUR THEIR MEMORY". A notation below that allows the plaque to be dated: "THIS PLAQUE WAS ERECTED IN 1960".