Průhonický Park: A unique place in the world near Prague
The castle park is located in the picturesque surroundings of the village of the same name in the Prague-west district, approximately fifteen kilometers from the center. When exploring it, you can choose from three circuits with a length of two and a half, five (the main circuit, accessible all year round) and ten kilometers. The longest route can take up to six hours for botany enthusiasts. There is a wonderful collection of wood plants numbering eighteen hundred species.
“The Silva-Tarouca family, which also included the park’s founder Arnošt Emanuel, had its roots in Portugal,” says Pavla Lešovská, Prague City Tourism guide. Arnošt’s ancestor named Emanuel decided to settle in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy after serving in the army, where he worked his way up to the secret imperial council of Empress Maria Theresa.
Creative ancestors
In 1768, Emanuel acquired the estate of Čechy pod Kosířem, today’s Olomouc Region, and it was there that later, in 1860, his son, Arnošt Emanuel Silva-Tarouca, was born.
“Both of Arnošt’s parents were gifted artists, they also invited the painter Josef Mánes to Bohemia under Kosíř, who went there for more than twenty years. Young Arnošt Emanuel gained knowledge about composition and color from him,” continues our guide. As we will soon see, they made good use of this knowledge in the creation of Průhonické Park.
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“Arnošt Emanuel studied law and also worked as a lawyer during the Czech governorship in Prague. He was young, handsome, but poor,” continues the guide. “During where he was invited in 1885, a list with a list with Maria Anton Nostic-Rieneck,” continues the guide in the narration.
He helped himself by getting married
“On the other hand, the Nostics were a very rich family, they built a theater in Prague, which we now know as Stavovské, they owned a palace in Na Příkopě Street, now known as Savarin, or mines in Trmice in North Bohemia,” calculates our escort. Próhonice was one of the estates of the Nostic family. The pair seemed to hit it off as they were married later that year and eventually had nine children together, seven of whom lived to adulthood.
“At first they lived in Trmice, but when Arnošt Emanuel looked at Průhonice, they enchanted him at first sight. At that time, it was a neglected estate, the castle still had a classicist appearance, there were outbuildings and only a small English park. therefore set to work and decided to rebuild everything,” describes the guide. Finally, in Průhonice, the manor of the castle, Arnošt Emanuel, lived and created for fifty-one years.
Whole-day trip
If you want, you can borrow headphones at the ticket office and walk through the park with an audio guide. There are three circuits of different lengths to choose from, from short walks of an hour and a half to a six-hour trip with a length of ten kilometers.
“Silva-Tarouca planted plants so that everything bloomed gradually and there was something to look at all year round. I can also recommend a visit to the park in winter and a walk to the local red-leaved oaks. As the name suggests, their leaves are colored beautifully red in snowy surroundings,” explains Lešovská.
“Many plants were planted here by Arnošt Emanuel with his own hands. He also had to go around in the morning, the park has 250 hectares,” the guide calculates. The owner of the manor was an enthusiastic botanist, in the castle library we would still find specialist books with his handwritten notes. “In Průhonicky Park, for example, he grew a spruce that bears his name: Picea abies Silva Tarouca. This label is used all over the world,” we learn.
The local alpinum, or rock garden, was completed by the manor of the castle with an alpine log cabin. “He didn’t want something non-original to be built here. That’s why he had an authentic log cabin transported here from the Austrian Alps,” says our guide. The local collection of rhododendrons is also respectable – we would find eight thousand of them in a hundred species and varieties in the park.
The original area of the park was constantly expanded by the owner. “He bought neighboring fields, often including a mill. The neighbors, who knew that Arnošt Emanuel wanted the land at any price, exaggerated their value. The lord of the castle bought them anyway,” smiles our guide. originally there was also a hunting reserve here, but Silva-Tarouca soon discovered that the animals were nibbling on his carefully cultivated plants. The animals therefore had to leave.
The enthusiastic owner also won with water, when he adjusted the flow of the river Botič with the help of weirs and waterfalls. “Somewhere the water slides, somewhere even faster and the whole valley comes to life,” explains the guide.
The work of a famous architect
A number of well-known names also worked together at the castle and its surroundings. “The courtyard in front of the castle was designed by the famous garden architect František Josef Thomayer, the brother of the famous doctor Josef. His work was, for example, the row of trees on Wenceslas Square or the park arrangement of Karlova náměstí,” we learn.
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Architect Jiří Stibral rebuilt the originally classicist castle in a neo-Renaissance style. “The relief of the deer with Saint Hubert on the castle facade is the work of the famous sculptor Celda Klouček,” adds the guide.
The oldest monument of the entire area is the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. “Its foundations are Romanesque, it was consecrated in 1187 by Prague bishop Jindřich Břetislav, nephew of King Vladislav,” we learn about the next building.
The owner of the entire estate, who by the way was the last Minister of Agriculture of Pre-Lithuania in 1917 and 1918, had only one problem – to whom to bequeath the property.
“The son Josef was brought up for this, but he died in the First World War. Another son was a bon vivant who would not be able to take care of the estate, another entered a monastery, and again they left for their husbands. In the end, Silva-Tarouca decided to sell the Próhonice estate and the Czechoslovak state park,” says the guide.
Sudden death
After the sale, Arnošt Emanuel could continue to live here and work on improving the park. “His wife died in 1934, he died two years later, suddenly, while visiting his daughter in Germany. He suffered a stroke while reading the newspaper in the morning,” says Pavla Lešovská.
“When the people standing around him looked at the newspapers they were reading, they found out that Arnošt Emanuel had read an article about Portugal before his death. The country where his family came from reportedly started supplying weapons to Francisco Franco’s Spanish fascist regime,” concludes the guide.
Fortunately, his life’s work has been preserved for future generations. Průhonicky Park has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1996, and since the end of the Second World War it has been managed by the Botanical Institute of the Academy of Sciences, which is also located here.
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In addition to the park itself, it is also possible to visit an exhibition in the castle premises, where visitors can learn more about the lord of the castle and the world of plants. If a six-hour tour of the park is not enough, you can extend the time of your visit.
You can find a list of other walks in Prague and its surroundings at prazskevychazky.cz. |
Průhonický park at the address Zámek 1 is open daily from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., entry 100 CZK, reduced 60 CZK, family (2+2) 260 CZK. More at pruhonickypark.cz |