A 27-Year-Old Bohemian Prince Jumps Into NFTs To Restore Family Castle
NDTV
One NFT for sale will represent an animated piece showing degradation and restoration of a panel of scrafitto of Hercules on a wall of the Nelahozeves Castle, one of the familys four properties in or around Prague.
A 600-year-old Bohemian noble family is embracing the latest craze sweeping the crypto and art worlds, hoping that NFTs will help pay for the restoration of its artwork collection and an ancestral castle.
The Czech Republic's Lobkowicz family — which once sponsored Beethoven, lost everything to the Nazis and Communists and then reclaimed their castles and artwork in the 1990s after the fall of communism — will auction a slew of non-fungible tokens and host a conference next month in Prague at the Lobkowicz Palace, from which you can see the entire city.
“We don't get any public funding,” said William Rudolf Lobkowicz, the 27-year-old prince who was born in Boston but raised in the Czech Republic. “My father sometimes says we are the richest poor people in the world. We are going to showcase some pieces that are in desperate need of restoration.”
The family is hoping to grab hold of a trend that has exploded over the past year, where digital certificates that serve as proof of ownership of something — physical or digital — have sold for millions of dollars. One NFT for sale will represent an animated piece showing degradation and restoration of a panel of scrafitto of Hercules on a wall of the Nelahozeves Castle, one of the family's four properties in or around Prague.
