Houska Castle guards a pit to Hell

Located in the forests, about 30 miles north of Prague, is the mysterious Gothic Houska Castle. It was constructed in a remote area, in the second half of the 13th century, during the reign of Ottokar II of Bohemia. Folklore states that the significance of its location is due to a bottomless pit, or what some have called a gateway to hell, or gateway to other worlds, and that Bohemian rulers decided to seal up the giant hole with the castle. There are legends surrounding this deep hole, with some locals claiming it is an entrance into a subterranean cavern system leading to possibly inhabited realms of the inner earth.
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