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Chateau Park
The chateau complex of Hluboká nad Vltavou lies on the elevated northern edge of the
České Budějovice Basin. The chateau, remodelled in the neo-Gothic style, takes up a dominant location on a rocky headland, and its nearest surroundings are shaped as regular parterres on two terraces. The vast landscape park was established by the Schwarzenbergs in the 1850s as part of the romanticist remodelling of the aristocratic residence, following the neo-Gothic rebuilding of the chateau. Both the surroundings of the chateau and the park have a dendrologically valuable collection of exotic woody plants. The chateau park, covering the area of 58 hectares, is situated at the height of 390-450 m above sea level.
History
The chateau complex and the surrounding countryside were given their present shape during the neo-Gothic remodelling of the chateau, carried out in the years 1840-1871 under Prince Jan Adolf II of Schwarzenberg and his spouse Eleonore.
When travelling about Britain, the princely couple visited the English and Scottish countryside, where they got acquainted with the production of leading English landscape painters, such as William Kent (1684-1748), Lancelot ‘Capability‘ Brown (1716-1783) and Humphry Repton (1752-1818). They visited a number of aristocratic residences with landscape parks and the countryside in the Lake District and Scotland, too. The Prince was invited to visit the Queen at Windsor Castle.
The Prince made his second journey to England in 1838, probably with the idea of establishing an elegant country residence in Bohemia according to the English models. The reason why Hluboká was chosen was the suitable position of the chateau in the countryside as well as its mediaeval core with its articulated ground plan. The Prince wanted to found a residence in his favourite place, with an appropriate measure of comfort and representation according to the model of the English royal residence in Windsor. Inspiration with romantic historical novels by Walter Scott obviously played an important role, too.
The chateau park was founded in the fields near the chateau. The ground had to be levelled with extensive backfill, which was very costly. In the period of 1851-1854 the formation was led by the gardener Theodor Rehder, the son of Prince Pückler’s garden inspector in the Lusatian town of Muskau. Further work until the completion of the park in 1864 was led by the Prince’s gardener Rudolf Vácha (1825-1899). He used his rich experience from his educational journeys in this country and abroad, where he had been sent by the Prince.
Description
The upper terrace in front of the chateau entrance on the eastern side is delimited by the building of the former winter riding school (Aleš South Bohemian Gallery), linked to the chateau by a glazed corridor of the winter garden. On the western side, the upper terrace is bordered by the former little chateau Stöckel (Štekl Hotel). A regular parterre is spread in front of the entrance to the chateau. The northern side is closed by a two-armed staircase with a neo-Gothic fountain, hidden in a group of grown beeches.
The building of the chateau is surrounded, on three sides at the lower ground level, by the regularly maintained Lower Garden. There is a round pool with waterworks set between shrubs, which the proud princess Krasomila in the well-known fairy-tale film fell into. The place in front of the southern front of the chateau, with the cast-iron porch used to house an orangery (nowadays the ceremonial hall). The look-out terrace offers a view of the magnificent panorama of the landscape park in the Podskalská and Poříčská meadows. The view is closed behind the silhouette of the nearby town of České Budějovice by the distant massif of the Blanský les Mountains with the landmark of the hill Kleť.
The area of the Lower Garden is remarkable from the dendrological point of view. It contains quality grown trees of prevailingly exotic origin, such as the tulip poplar, male and female gingko trees, durmast oak, sweet chestnut, plane tree, Kentucky coffee tree, yellow wood and shagbark hickory; coniferous trees are represented by the alcock spruce, western redcedar and the hemlock. Of the domestic species, a grown elm and a giant yew should not be omitted. Views to the Podskalská meadow open up in the vegetation along the verge of the garden.
North of the chateau, the parterre continues as a landscape park, interwoven with a network of coach and promenade paths. Winding in continuous curves, the paths cross nature-close sceneries, made up of vegetation of domestic woody plants and meadows with solitaire trees. Exotic species are used to merely enrich the parts with inconspicuous colour and shape contrasts. The park relies only on the natural landmarks and the borrowed distant countryside – views of the vast surface of Munický Pond with the Ohrada hunting lodge, court Vondrov with an adjoining network of alleys, the silhouette of the Bohemian Forest and Blanský les, and views into the nearby enclosure through the park.
There is a neo-Gothic style water-house on the look-out elevation in front of the chateau. Water is pumped by a hydraulic ram from the Vltava River into a reservoir made in the rock, and is used to feed the park pool, too. There is a hardened driveway towards the chateau aside from the main park space, leading on the eastern slope. Close to it, there is a building of the former garages of the lord’s family and a little house, once used as a powder store.
In 1997 the pool in the central part of the park was repaired and filled with water, and the arched bridge to the island was renovated (1998). Since 1999, the look-out place in the meadow above the cemetery has had a bricked wall and description of the view. In the late 1990s a spectacular festive illumination of the chateau, parterre and the Lower Garden was installed.
Marek Ehrlich
Literature:
Pavlátová, M. – Ehrlich, M. et al.: Zahrady a parky jižních Čech (Gardens and Parks of South Bohemia). Garden and Landscape Formation Society, o.s. and Nebe s.r.o., Prague and České Budějovice 2004
Pavlátová, M. – Popelová, I.: Zámecký park Hluboká nad Vltavou (Chateau Park of Hluboká nad Vltavou). Cultural Heritage Development Foundation, Hluboká nad Vltavou 1994
Pacáková-Hošťálková, B. et al.: Zahrady a parky v Čechách, na Moravě a ve Slezsku (Gardens and Parks in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia). Libri, Prague 1999
