Discover Kluky: Church, Castle and Rural Architecture

Get to know Kluky through its local history and diverse architectural styles. The village is laid out as a street village running from east to west. At its center, the village green widens; this is where the Church of St John the Baptist stands. Its central location provides a clear focal point for the village center and connects the settlement’s layout with a building whose history stretches back to the Middle Ages.

The Church of St John the Baptist and its grounds

The church was originally a Gothic building from the second quarter of the 14th century and was modified in the 18th century. Today it is a branch church; previously, it was the parish church of the Roman Catholic parish of Bykáň. This place thus brings together a long architectural history and a change in ecclesiastical function.

Its architectural features include a rectangular nave, a polygonal chancel and a small roof turret. “Polygonal” describes the chancel’s many-sided shape; a roof turret is a small tower on the roof. The church grounds also include a bell tower, a mortuary and an enclosure wall with a gate. The roof turret and bell tower are two distinct features: one sits on the church roof, while the other is a separate structure on the grounds. Statues of St John of Nepomuk and St Florian are also part of the grounds.

Kluky Castle: Several Phases of Building History

Kluky Castle stands on the site of a Gothic fortress dating from the 17th century and shows structural changes from the 18th century. Between 1880 and 1890, it was extensively rebuilt as a Neo-Renaissance villa under the Dačický z Heslova family. This sequence makes clear the distinction between the earlier fortified building, later changes and the major 19th-century renovation. “Neo-Renaissance” refers here to the style in which the castle was designed during this renovation.

The castle is fenced off and not open to the public. The access information was last updated on 27 June 2024, so check the conditions before visiting. Its architectural history can be understood as a sequence of several transformations, regardless.

A Statue and Rural Residential Architecture

A Baroque sandstone statue of St John of Nepomuk stands by the roadside in a small park. It dates from the second half of the 18th century and has been a cultural monument since 1966. Together with the statue of St John in the church grounds, it depicts the same saint, but stands at a different location in the village.

A traditional rural dwelling in Kluky illustrates another, smaller-scale aspect of the village’s architectural history. It is single-storey and built of unfired bricks. Its projecting, weatherboarded gable and gabled roof with hipped ends give the house a different architectural character from the church and castle. Hipped ends are sloping roof surfaces at the gable ends. This makes it possible to understand rural architecture through specific details rather than treating it simply as general background to the village.

Consider the Villagescape and Timelines Together

The church and castle tell different stories: for the church, the focus is on its 14th-century Gothic origins and its 18th-century alterations; for the castle, it is the fortress, subsequent structural changes and the renovation between 1880 and 1890. The statue and dwelling broaden this perspective to include Baroque sculpture and traditional architectural forms. For choosing a travel destination, Kluky offers a specific focus: anyone interested in architectural history can distinguish several periods and types of buildings without reducing them to a single, simplified account of the village’s history.

Discover more destinations: Vlkaneč, Kutná Hora, Čáslav, Souňov, Soběšín, Zhoř, Močovice, Košice U Nepoměřic.

For the broader travel overview: Kutná Hora District.