Valtice is a small town in Breclav District, South Moravian Region in the Czech Republic, situated 265 kilometres (165 mi) south-east of Prague, on the Austrian border. It had a population of 3,671 in 2005.
Valtice contains one of the most impressive Baroque residences of Central Europe. It was designed as the seat of the ruling princes of Liechtenstein by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach in the early 18th century. Construction was supervised by Domenico Martinelli, who was employed as an on-site architect. The palace is surrounded by an English park with the Temple of Diana (1812) and other neoclassical structures. Together with the neighbouring manor of Lednice, to which it is connected by a 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) long lime-tree avenue, Valtice forms the World Heritage Site Lednice–Valtice Cultural Landscape.
The princely family lost all its privileges with the collapse of their protectors the Habsburg Empire and by the then newly established state of Czechoslovakia in 1918, the predecessor of the Czech Republic; and the castle was confiscated after World War II, when the Communists took power
