In the European space, chateau buildings and sites represent an important historical, urban and social element of the cultural landscape, which refers to the continuity of the present and the past in the space of urban and rural settlements. However, it is a sad fact that many of these buildings are now abandoned and dilapidated. The aim of this paper is to identify, against the background of a synthesis of both theoretical and actual knowledge, a group of reasons why this is the case, using the example of the Czech Republic. Due to the political and property changes implemented in the first half of the 20th century, two original groups of market and non-market causes and four categories of causal factors have been determined (inappropriate purpose; ownership problem; operational (investment) inefficiency and extraordinary events), which have their parallel in the analysis of the causes of occurrence specific chateau brownfields in the Moravian-Silesian Region.