The Royal Garden

This guide to the Royal Garden in Prague opens with Ferdinand the First, who stopped shaving the day his wife Anne Jagiellon died in January fifteen forty-seven, three days after giving birth to their last child, ending a marriage of fifteen children that began as an arranged match between two eighteen-year-olds. You'll hear about the Italian-style garden and summer palace Ferdinand had already built for her on this hillside, construction that dragged on for two decades and outlived both its architect and its builder. Listen near the Belvedere for the bronze fountain courtiers once pressed an ear against to hear its trick.