The oldest part of the castle is a stretch of the town ramparts with the small Salt Gate and a medieval bastion. Possibly in the mid-15th century there used to be a manor, perhaps a predecessor of the castle. Adam Říčanský of Říčany, owner of the estate since 1550, was the first local nobleman to undertake the construction of a genuine stately home. He enlarged the plot of land by pulling down three town houses in the north-western corner of the square. This not only provided him with land for the erection of a grandiose manor, but emphasized the distance between him and the burghers, as also his superiority, which he additionally indicated by moving the castle to the highest and most distant location in town. The construction had to be completed by his widow Eva, Adam Říčanský having died already in 1552. Moreover, the barely completed castle was devastated in 1561 by a fire, which lay waste almost the entire town. In 1572 the lords of Říčany left Pelhřimov. As the town hall was burned down by a fire in 1582, the elders moved to the castle. The castle was damaged by a smaller fire in 1682, when the first floor was completed. The Pelhřimov chronicle for the year 1760 mentions, in describing the town hall, rooms for the town weight-bridge, the completion of the salt-house in 1707, officers' lodgings, the entry and the council hall (fresco hall), rooms in which books and documents were kept, the goal (at the time three rooms) and a dungeon or torture chamber. Six years later, in 1766, the castle and goal were ravaged by a devastating fire, together with a major part of the town. In charge of the reconstruction was the town's building constructor Wolfgang Fielsser; the damaged vaults had to be pulled down. The entire reconstruction, including the paintings in the council hall at the castle, was completed in 1770. As the balcony on the façade of the first floor was in desolate condition and totally unsafe it had to be removed in 1840. Its removal and the transfer of the statues of Justice and Protection to niches on the ground floor and the setting up of an office for land registers was the work of Jan Filzig. The castle has no wings, its oldest part is a Gothic bastion, which was incorporated into the Renaissance castle after the fire in 1561. The projecting part was hidden by the new town goal, all that can be seen is a small gable with a moulded oval window framed by pilasters and decorated with volutes. Only a small section of the removed balcony remains above the main entrance to the building. The ground floor is decorated with bosses, in the niches stand the already mentioned statues. Compound pilasters dominate the centre of the façade, above them, against a background of lesenes, is an Austrian eagle, a reminder of the time when the castle housed the imperial and royal law court. The windows on the ground floor are semi-arched, the floors are separated by a cordon cornice, the façade on the first floor is decorated with broad lesenes. The windows are combined, rectangular, with moulded frontons, above each window is a small oval window with a simple chambranle, seen on all the windows. In the centre of the mansard pantile roof is a turret with a calendar clock, topped by a dome with a lantern. The figures of Saturn and Hercules strike the hour. In the castle are some collections of the Museum of the Czech-Moravian Highlands in Pelhřimov, the museum library and a work-room.