Opocno

The story of Opocno

Opočno was first recorded in 1068 by Cosmas of Prague in his Chronica Boemorum, when a fortified settlement stood on the site. The castle grew from an earlier hill-fort in the late 13th and 14th centuries and is documented with certainty by 1394.

The Trčka of Lípa family owned the estate from 1495 and had the castle rebuilt in the Renaissance style, with arcaded wings added in the 1560s. After the male Trčka line ended in 1634, Opočno passed to Rudolf Colloredo von Walsee. A Capuchin monastery was founded in 1673.

From 1807 Rudolf Josef Colloredo-Mansfeld turned the Zlatý potok valley into a landscape park. A district court and a hospital were established in the 19th century, and the Colloredo-Mansfeld property was confiscated in 1942.

The town lies in the Rychnov nad Kněžnou District and had 3,118 residents on 1 January 2026.

Falconry in Opocno

Opočno holds an international falconers' meeting every autumn, usually in the first week of October. The 58th edition took place in 2025. A 2010 report counted more than a hundred falconers, who worked in groups by bird type and flew hawks, falcons and eagles over the surrounding hunting grounds.

The programme also includes training demonstrations for visitors, and the organisers described it as one of the largest events of its kind in Europe. Czech falconers interviewed that year said the tradition is documented on Czech territory from the Great Moravian period.

Czechia is one of the states named in UNESCO's inscription of falconry as a living human heritage, and Czech falconers marked the tenth anniversary of the 2010 inscription in 2020.