Vrtba Garden, Prague

Vrtba Garden is a High Baroque landscape folded into Petřín Hill in Malá Strana. Its compact terraces rise through the slope, turning a constricted site into a formal sequence of planted spaces. Count Jan Josef of Vrtba commissioned it during the early eighteenth century, and František Maxmilián Kaňka devised the layout while working on the palace.

Notice the gateway: Braun’s carved figures give this modest entrance theatrical force. Beyond it, the Sala Terrena joins palace and garden; Reiner painted its frescoed interior, while an old aviary answers it across the pool. The design survived later alterations to the palace, and major conservation and replanting led to its public return in June nineteen ninety-eight. This garden is part of a Czech cultural monument.