Olomouc, North Moravia, Aug 15 (CTK) – The Olomouc Archbishopric has filed a lawsuit challenging the state ownership of the Flower Garden, a part of the Kromeriz chateau complex, south Moravia, in an effort to have the UNESCO-listed sight returned to it, its spokesman Jiri Gracka told CTK on Tuesday.
The Archbishopric is convinced that the Flower Garden forms a integral unit together with the chateau and the Chateau Garden, which were returned to the church based on the restitution law in the past years, Gracka said.
That is why the Olomouc Archbishopric’s restitution claims should apply to the Flower Garden as well, he said, adding that the church wants the case to be checked by an independent court.
The Kromeriz chateau and both adjacent gardens, the Chateau Garden and the Flower Garden, have been UNESCO-listed since 1998.
The National Heritage Institute (NPU) told CTK that it has not returned the Flower Garden because it doubts whether legal conditions for the return were met.
The Archbishopric filed the lawsuit two months ago, but it did not make its step public. CTK learned about it only on Tuesday.
The state decided to return the chateau and the Chateau Garden within its property settlement with churches in 2015. It refused to hand the Flower Garden over to the Catholic Church because the garden’s historical complex is combined with new building elements that cannot be put aside and cannot be given to the church, the NPU said.
Three years ago, works worth 230 million crowns were finished in the Flower Garden that returned its 17th-century shape to it.
Kromeriz’s Flower Garden is the only persisting representative of this kind of a composed unit in Europe. Its construction was initiated by Olomouc Bishop Karl von Liechtenstein-Castelcorno in the mid-17th century, according to the chateau’s website www.zamek-kromeriz.cz.
The state officially gave the chateau and the Chateau Garden to the church this April. Immediately afterwards, the Olomouc Archbishopric returned the sight to the NPU to continue maintaining and operating it based on a bilateral deal.
