Wallenstein Palace

The palace occupies an elongated plot in Prague’s Malá Strana quarter and forms four interior courtyards around a sequence of connected wings. The site was prepared by clearing earlier urban fabric: the building replaced a noble residence and required demolition of many smaller houses, private gardens and nearby brickworks to create the wide footprint now visible. The composition and layout combine an urban street front with villa-like garden courts, reflecting an ambitious program of accommodation and display for a princely household.

Principal interior spaces preserve their original hierarchical arrangement and circulation routes. A double-height Main Hall opens off the principal façade; it was built with an original floor area of about 288 square metres and a height near 10.5 metres. A second large ceremonial room, called the Knights’ Hall, also rises through two storeys. Smaller rooms include an antechamber and a compact, circular Audience Hall capped by a dome. Long decorative passages link these spaces, among them a Mythological Corridor with a sequence of painted scenes, an Astronomical Corridor adorned with allegories of the continents and zodiac signs, and an Ovidian corridor bearing subjects drawn from Metamorphoses. A planned network of corridors permits movement from the Audience Hall to private studies, the gardens and the stables without passing through intermediate reception rooms.

Decoration and fittings retain both original surfaces and later restorations. Ceilings in the principal halls were executed with large figurative frescoes that present mythological and planetary themes; the Main Hall ceiling shows the owner portrayed as Mars in a four-horse chariot (quadriga). Interior stucco and ornamental work were produced by specialist craftsmen and the two-storey chapel contains a richly painted program centred on scenes from the life of St Wenceslas. The chapel altar dates to 1630 and was made by a noted woodcarver of the period. Many movable furnishings originally included tapestries, furniture ordered from Italy and the Netherlands, and extensive tableware and jewels, although substantial elements of that inventory were removed during wartime looting.

The surrounding grounds follow an Italianate garden scheme and once displayed an avenue of statues, an aviary, an artificial grotto, a fountain ensemble, a pond, stables and a large Riding School or manège. Bronze figures by Adriaen de Vries formed the garden statuary until their removal in 1648; those originals were taken to Sweden and are now at Drottningholm Palace, and later garden sculptures are copies. Conservation work at the end of the twentieth century recreated the historic pond and fountain and installed a bronze Neptune attributed to Adriaen de Vries in the fountain basin. The Riding School has been adapted as an exhibition space, while other exterior and interior areas have been conserved or restored to permit formal events and institutional use.