Fig House (Fíkovna), Lysice Château

The Lysice estate in South Moravia passed by marriage to the Dubský family of Třebomyslice at the beginning of the 19th century. Emanuel Dubský (1806-1881) had the château remodelled by the builder Kajetán Vašíček, and it was under this family that the ornamental garden took its present form, with its terraces and a colonnade carrying a covered pergola. According to the National Heritage Institute (NPÚ), the two Baroque orangeries, one of which served as a greenhouse, were replaced in 1835 by a new orangery and a new greenhouse; the fíkovna dates from the same year. It was designed as a winter shelter for undemanding, heat-loving deciduous plants, above all the fig.

In 1887 the building was given a movable roof that slid on rails into the slope behind it for the summer. Figs were grown there until the First Republic period; at Christmas the family gave baskets of figs, topped up with pineapples, mandarins and pomegranates from the orangery.

Confiscated in 1945 under the Beneš decrees from its last owner, Albrecht Dubský (1882-1962), the château passed to the state; it was declared a national cultural monument in 2001 and is run by the NPÚ. Between October 2021 and December 2023 a full restoration of the garden and its horticultural buildings, funded with 182 million crowns from the Ministry of Culture and 11 million from the NPÚ, brought the roof mechanism back into working order. The fíkovna was shown to the public for the first time on 17-18 February 2024, drawing some 1,500 visitors.

The fíkovna is a specialised glasshouse built for frost-tender trees that shed their leaves in winter. Its lower part is masonry; above it, the glass-and-iron roof added in 1887 sits on rails. In fine weather the roof was rolled backwards and stowed in the slope against which the building stands, leaving the figs in the open air, then brought back for the cold season.

The arrangement was considered technically very advanced for its time, and the NPÚ and the château describe the fíkovna as the only structure of its kind still working in the Czech Republic and a rarity in Central Europe. The 2021-2023 restoration made the roof run again.

The building stands in the western part of the park, north of the greenhouse and the orangery, with which it forms the château's horticultural complex (zámecké zahradnictví). During the same campaign these two neighbouring buildings were rebuilt to reduce heat loss, with new glazing and new heating, while the site's services and automation were renewed.

After decades without them, fig trees are back in the fíkovna and figs are grown there once more, in keeping with the Dubský tradition of giving the fruit as a Christmas present.

The neighbouring greenhouse and orangery hold the château's camellia collection: several dozen shrubs in about forty varieties. Six of them came from Karlovy Vary in 1996-1997 and originally from Dresden, where they survived the bombing of the Second World War. Unusually, the Lysice camellias are scented; they flower most profusely in February, around St Valentine's Day. In the growing season more than sixty kinds of flowers fill the beds of a garden restored to its late 19th-century appearance.

Since 28 March 2024 the fíkovna has been part of the Lysice château garden route, which can be followed independently or with a guide. The route crosses the terraces, the colonnade with its covered pergola and the sala terrena, whose paintings of ships, sea creatures and city views were restored in 2019, before reaching the horticultural complex, billed as the only château nursery open to the public in the Czech Republic. February, when the camellias flower, and summer, when the fig house roof is rolled back, are two particularly good times to come. The garden visit pairs naturally with a tour of the château interiors.