The White Lady of Rožmberk (Český Krumlov Castle)

The castle of Český Krumlov, rising above a bend of the Vltava in South Bohemia, is the second-largest castle complex in the Czech Republic and the centrepiece of a UNESCO-listed town. For three centuries it was the seat of the Rosenbergs (Rožmberkové), the most powerful noble family in Bohemia, and it is the home of the country’s best-known ghost: the Bílá paní, or White Lady.

The woman usually named as the White Lady was real. Perchta of Rožmberk was born at Krumlov around 1429, the daughter of Oldřich II of Rožmberk. In 1449, partly to ease the family’s money troubles, she was married to Jan V of Lichtenstein and taken to his castle at Mikulov in Moravia. The dowry payments faltered, the marriage turned bitter, and Perchta wrote again and again to her father and brothers asking for help: 32 of her letters survive in the Rosenberg archive at Třeboň, describing a cold room without proper bedding, humiliation by her husband’s family and a lack of money. Help never really came. After Jan’s death in 1473 she was free, but she died in Vienna on 2 May 1476 and was buried there.

In the 17th century the Jesuit historian Bohuslav Balbín read Perchta’s letters and concluded that she must be the White Lady already said to haunt the Rosenberg castles, even ‘identifying’ her portrait in the gallery at Jindřichův Hradec – a picture that, as later scholars noticed, shows a costume from a century after her death. Legend added that her dying husband had begged her forgiveness and cursed her when she refused, condemning her to wander. Historians today see the White Lady as a much older family tradition that Balbín attached to Perchta’s moving story.

The castle’s own retelling presents her as a protective spirit. Dressed in white with keys at her belt, she walks the corridors before important events: smiling, she announces good fortune; wearing black gloves, she warns of death or disaster. She watched over the family’s children, the story goes, and once scolded the nurses of the infant Petr Vok, last of the Rosenbergs, before vanishing into a wall – where, years later, he is said to have found treasure.

A tall, pale woman in a flowing white dress and veil, keys at her waist, seen in corridors and chambers of the Rosenberg castles. Her expression and gloves were read as omens – white for good news, black for coming death – and she was said to rock unattended babies.

Český Krumlov Castle, especially its corridors, and the former Jesuit college in the town; also other Rosenberg seats such as Rožmberk nad Vltavou and Jindřichův Hradec, and Telč, where supposed portraits of her hang.

The White Lady is a staple of Czech folklore, novels – such as Eda Kriseová’s Perchta z Rožmberka aneb Bílá paní (2004) – and castle tours across South Bohemia. Český Krumlov’s castle publishes her legend alongside that of Don Julius d’Austria, the troubled son of Emperor Rudolf II who lived there.