Slavin in Tupadly

The stone lookout tower is located on a hill above Tupadly, a village about 15 km north of Mělník. The lookout tower is located at an altitude of 246 meters and its total height is 30 meters. There is a viewing platform at the same height.

At present, Slavín in Tupadly is privately owned and is not accessible. But it is definitely worth seeing and even from the hill on which it is located, there is a nice view of the Elbe, the eastern side of the Bohemian Central Mountains and the Liběchovka valley.

The local lookout tower is a historic building. It is actually a tower of the Tupadla chateau near Mělník. Even earlier, there used to be an old fortress called Kostelec, which, however, was severely damaged during the Thirty Years' War. Two hundred years later, the ruins were taken over by Antonín Veith, a romantic patron and owner of the Liběchov estate, who planned to build a chateau on this site. It was originally supposed to have four towers and Moorish elements, and was to serve as a depository of twenty-four statues by Ludwig von Scheanthaler, which were to depict the greats of Czech history. However, Veith died and there were no funds for the completion, so the building remained unfinished. Basically, only one tower was built. The mentioned statues are now stored in the National Museum in Prague.

The function of the lookout tower has been performed by an octagonal prismatic tower since 1873, when its modifications began. After some time, an institute of school nurses was established on this site and a chapel was added at the same time. The tower served as a lookout tower until World War II, after which the building belonged to the Land Research Institute, which banned the use of the tower as a tourist lookout tower. After the revolutionary year of 1989, the building was privatized and today serves as a meditation center for the Buddhist association Samadhi.

The lookout tower is currently not open to the public and was opened only on April 19, 2009 on the occasion of the 6th meeting of the Club of Friends of Lookout Towers.

Author: Andrea Štyndlová