The Archives of Prague Castle

The Archives of Prague Castle came into being in 1920. The workplace concentrates written material and documentation concerning the Castle, its history, research projects, building activity, repairs and maintenance. The basis consists of historical documents arising from the activity of the offices administering Prague Castle since the 16th century. These offices were the Court Building Office, the Castle Inspection and, from 1860, the Castle Regional Authority. Apart from the archive material which was physically present in Prague, there was also brought from Austria, within the framework of the separation of documents between the Czechoslovak Republic and the Austrian Republic (1920-1923), the written material from the Imperial Archives which belonged to Prague Castle from the point of view of provenance.
In the year 2003 the Archives of Prague Castle was administering 53 archive funds and collections, some of them of world-wide importance (archives and manuscripts of the Metropolitan Chapter of St Vitus). In terms of time the extent of the funds and collections is roughly from the 6th century AD to the fifties of the 20th century. The Archives have carried out the processing of these and the protection of their physical condition. An intrinsic part of this was the research programme within the framework of the public activity of the archives. Since 2001 the Archives have provided information on their activity in the form of Annual Reports.

The Archives of Prague Castle have a web site (http://www.old.hrad.cz/castle/archiv/index.html) and are also presented on the UNESCO Archives Portal (http://www.unesco.org) Further information is available at the web site of the Czech Archival Association http://www.cesarch.cz.