Garden sights in Prague
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Vrtbov Garden
This ‘secret garden’, hidden along an alley at the corner of Tržiště and Karmelitská, was built in 1720 for the Earl of Vrtba, the senior chancellor of Prague Castle. It’s a formal baroque garden, climbing steeply up the hillside to a terrace graced with baroque statues of Roman mythological figures by Matthias Braun – see if you can spot Vulcan, Diana and Mars.
Below the terrace (on the right, looking down) is a tiny studio once used by Czech painter Mikuláš Aleš, and above is a little lookout with good views of Prague Castle and Malá Strana.
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Palace Gardens Beneath Prague Castle
These beautiful, terraced gardens on the steep southern slopes below the castle date from the 17th and 18th centuries, when they were created for the owners of the adjoining palaces. They were restored in the 1990s and contain a Renaissance loggia with frescoes of Pompeii and a baroque portal with sundial that cleverly catches the sunlight reflected off the water in a triton fountain.
There are two entrances: one on Valdštejnská street next to the Palffy Palace Restaurant, and one at the top of the hill in the Garden on the Ramparts at Prague Castle.
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Royal Garden
A gate on the northern side of Prague Castle leads to the Powder Bridge (Prašný most; 1540), which spans the Stag Moat and leads to the Royal Garden, which started life as a Renaissance garden built by Ferdinand I in 1534. It is graced by several gorgeous Renaissance structures.
The most beautiful of the garden’s buildings is the Ball-Game House (Míčovna; 1569), a masterpiece of Renaissance sgraffito where the Habsburgs once played a primitive version of badminton. To the east is the Summer Palace (Letohrádek; 1538–60), or Belvedere, the most authentic Italian Renaissance building outside Italy, and to the west the former Riding School (Jízdárna; 1695). All…
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D
Letná Gardens & Terrace
Letná is a vast open space between Milady Horáková and the river, with a parade ground to the north and a peaceful park, the Letná Gardens (Letenské sady), in the south, offering picture-postcard views over the city and its bridges. In summer you’ll find an open-air beer garden. In 1261 Přemysl Otakar II held his coronation celebrations here, and during communist times, Letná was the site of Moscow-style May Day military parades. In 1989 around 750,000 people gathered here in support of the Velvet Revolution. In 2008, the far northwestern corner of the park was torn up to build the enormous Blanka Tunnel, part of Prague’s future ring-road system. When completed…
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