The Vrtba Garden

This guide to the Vrtba Garden in Prague follows Jan Josef, Count of Vrtba, the king's top official in Bohemia, who around seventeen twenty turned a steep vineyard slope into a private showpiece with architect Frantisek Maxmilian Kanka. You'll hear about sculptor Matyas Bernard Braun's muscular stone figures and marble gods watching from the balustrades, and the frescoed garden hall painted with scenes of Venus and Adonis. It traces the garden's decline after the family sold up in seventeen ninety-nine, until the gate shut for thirteen years as the terraces grew too dangerous to walk.