The bishops of Olomouc owned the town from the 13th century and used the castle as their main residence. Bishop Stanislav I Thurzo replaced it with a more comfortable late Gothic residence in 1500, with some Renaissance detail. The Swedish army sacked it in 1643. A bishop commissioned the Baroque renovation in 1664. Filiberto Lucchese began it and designed the Pleasure Garden, and Giovanni Pietro Tencalla took over after Lucchese died in 1666.
After a fire in March 1752, Bishop Hamilton commissioned Franz Anton Maulbertsch and Josef Stern to decorate the halls.
The Pleasure Garden is a largely intact Baroque garden that combines Italian Baroque influence with a French formal layout. A 19th-century English garden near the palace was damaged in the 1997 floods. UNESCO listed the castle and gardens in 1998, with a core area of 184 acres (74.5 hectares). The article gives no visitor information.
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