Vrtba garden (Vrtbovská zahrada)

The Vrtba Garden is a cultural monument of class I enlisted on the UNESCO List, which is property of the City of Prague. The garden with territory of 0.3 hectares is located, along with three other Baroque style gardens (Vratislav, Schönborn, and Lobkowicz gardens), on a slope of the Petřín Hill. Knowledge on Prague’s gardens usually refers to Baroque gardens. The Vrtba Garden belongs to our country most precious and most beautiful Baroque gardens and is considered to be the masterpiece of European importance, however, when taken in the unity with other historical monuments forming the premises of the Prague Historical Reserve then its importance is rather at the world level.
This Baroque terrace-garden of Italian type was built for Jan Josef Count of Vrtba, the Highest Burgrave of the Prague Castle, near the Vrtba Palace in 1715 – 1720. The surprising effect of the garden composition is based on the gradation of terrace plateaus interconnected by stairways and carried by supporting walls shaped in curves typical to the Baroque style. The bottom section of the garden, having a round pool in the middle, is in between a sala terrena on the north side of the Palace south wing and an aviary, which forms its counter-located mirroring decorative scene. The sala terrena, which forms a typical connection of the Palace and the garden is decorated with Reiner’s frescoes and statues of Bacchus and Cerera from Matyáš Bernard Braun.
In the first half of the 19th century the palace and the garden were rebuilt into the Classicist style. From this garden, there is a very nice view of the historical part of Prague (Prague Castle, St. Nicholas church). After the reconstruction the Vrtbovská garden has been reopened since June 1998.