Wallenstein Palace and Garden

Garden · Malá Strana — Valdštejnské náměstí / LetenskáPrague,Czechia

A Prague palace and garden built by the general who paid for the emperor's army, with his own face on the war god painted overhead.

Wallenstein Palace has a war god on its ceiling with the owner's face. The Main Hall is 24 metres by 12 and 10.5 high, and the fresco over it shows Mars riding a war chariot. Baccio del Bianco sketched it and Domenico Pugliani painted it, and the god has the features of Albrecht von Wallenstein, who paid for the room. Behind the house is the garden, and it is the part most people come for. The garden was ordered by a man who paid for the emperor's army out of his own pocket and expected to be housed on the same scale. He started clearing ground in 1623 and the palace was standing by 1630. The lawn was laid out around a set of bronzes by Adriaen de Vries. Along one side runs a dripstone wall, an artificial rock crust with animals and grimacing faces worked into it, which you either stop for or walk past as grey masonry. Further on there is an aviary with eagle owls, and peacocks work the grass in front of you, entirely uninterested in visitors.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Come in through the Letenská gate — The palace front on the square is the Senate's business entrance; the garden door beside the tram stop opens onto the loggia and lawns.
This is a summer garden and nothing else — it is locked from late autumn until spring, so a winter visit to Malá Strana should not be planned around it at all.
Look at the loggia ceiling, not just the arcade — the sala terrena is painted inside with mythological scenes, and it was built to be the room the whole garden is watched from.

Things to do

1
Find the faces in the dripstone wall
Walk to the long artificial rock face at the side of the garden and stand close enough to touch it. The crust was built to look like a natural grotto, and worked into it are half-hidden animals and grimacing faces — frogs, snakes, heads. Nobody points them out; you either stop and look or walk past a grey wall.
2
Sit in the loggia and look back at the lawn
Take a seat under the sala terrena's arches, where the painted vault of gods runs overhead, and look out along the garden the way its owner meant it to be looked at. The whole layout — the pond, the bronzes, the paths — was composed to be seen from this one shaded room rather than walked through.
3
Stand under the war god with a face
If the palace interiors are open on the day you come, go into the Main Hall and look up. Mars rides a chariot across a ceiling ten and a half metres overhead, and the face is Wallenstein's own. It was painted while he commanded the emperor's armies, four years before the emperor had him killed.