Stekník

A rococo château standing alone in a sea of hop fields — five Italian garden terraces from the 1760s stepping down its southern slope, part of the Žatec UNESCO landscape.

Stekník is one of the finest rococo buildings in Bohemia, and its setting makes it stranger and better: the château stands on a low spur completely surrounded by hop fields, whose owners it served for centuries as estate seat. A Žatec burgher built the baroque core in 1681 on the site of a burnt stronghold; the rococo remake and the garden came around 1765–70, when Count Kulhánek of Klaudenstein laid out five stone-walled terraces stepping down the southern slope — one of the few preserved Italian-style gardens in the country. Since 2023 the château and its hop landscape belong to the Žatec UNESCO inscription; the state runs tours in season.