The Devil Heads
Two monumental sandstone faces carved into a forested cliff near Želízy, created in the 1840s and left to erode into something increasingly unsettling.
The Devil Heads (Czech: Čertovy hlavy) are a pair of giant rock sculptures near the village of Želízy in Central Bohemia. They were carved directly into a sandstone outcrop by Czech sculptor Václav Levý between 1841 and 1846, each head rising to roughly 9 metres in height.
Unlike modern public art, these faces feel like something you discover rather than visit: hidden in pine forest, weather-worn, and partially damaged by time. Their scale is the shock — human features enlarged to the point where they read as monstrous, with the rock itself doing part of the work as it cracks, softens, and erases details.
The Devil Heads are also part of a wider cluster of Levý’s works in the area (including other carved reliefs and sites linked to his rock-sculpture trail), making this a rare landscape where nature, obsession, and 19th-century imagination merge into a genuinely eerie destination.
Location: In the forest above Želízy, Central Bohemia, Czech Republic.
Address: Čertovy hlavy, 277 21 Želízy, Czech Republic
Category: sculptures, folklore, nature
Tags: Devil Heads, Čertovy hlavy, Václav Levý, Želízy, Central Bohemia, sandstone, rock carving, eerie landscape
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