Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/59

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the old Castellan’s House with former state prisons, the black tower and Daliborka from the XIVth. century. In the newer part of the castle we give a passing glance at two magnificent Halls: the German Hall, formerly the picture gallery of Rudolph II., a lover of all arts, and the Spanish Hall, rebuilt at a great cost in the first half of the XVIIIth century after the designs of Ignatio Dienzenhoffer (it is one of the largest and most magnificent palatial halls in Europe) and we wend our steps back into the first Castle-court, passing a fine water-basin made by Kohl in the second half of the XVIIth. century, to the Dust-bridge, and farther on by the large castle-mews dating from Rudolph’s time, to the extensive Castle-gardens, which in the same emperor’s age were amongst the most celebrated on the continent. They contain artistic subjects of almost fabulous value, a remarkable botanical garden full of the rarest plants and flowers; mostly gifts of foreign monarchs and their embassies to Prague which was at that time the residence of the imperial court. There is the „Stag’s moat“ (Jelení příkop) a lion-court (the scene of Schiller’s well known poem „The glove“) a beautiful ball-house, ornamented with sgrafitti and loggie, where the cream of the Bohemian nobility used to assemble. At present, alas! the gardens are deserted, the valuable objects dispersed and the once splendid ball house changed into a lumber-magazine. One thing is left, a unique view of the mediaeval back-part of the Castle, the chief aim of our walk. A long avenue of trees leads past a small water-basin to the centre of the gardens marked by the only remnant of the former sculptural ornamentation, a statue of Hercules standing in a small rondel, from which a side-avenue presents a beautiful prospect of the Castle at but a short distance from the observer. Through the thinned branches of the trees we see across the moist air of the shady Stag’s moat the outlines of Mihulka (one of the dungeons), the bulky masonry of the white tower, and above this, the white pyramids of St. George′s church and all round them red pantile roofs, which with the spacious Castle-buildings, fortifications, bastions and barbicans form as it were the spacious base, above which ascends the magnificent edifice of St. Vitus′ Cathedral with the sharp ridges of its slate-