Kaskádová fontána

This guide to the Kaskádová fontána in the Český Krumlov castle garden opens with the Viennese architect Andreas Altomonte, who drew up a rococo water cascade in the mid seventeen fifties, and the sculptor Jan Antonin Zinner, who carved its sea nymphs, tritons and allegories of the seasons out of shell limestone hauled from Austria. It traces how Neptune, Amphitrite and four tiers of stone fed by pine and later cast-iron pipes kept the water moving for two centuries, until decades of neglect by the nineteen seventies left the carving crumbling. By then, the World Monuments Fund had placed it on its list of the hundred most endangered monuments on earth, right alongside the gardens of Vienna's own Belvedere Palace.