Great, hairy greetings to you! Do please forgive my bleary blitherings today. I had a lovely night out with friends and I am a wee bit-- erhm, sleepy. Drug my stubby tail back home around midnight and was up dim and early at 5:00 with my family. The lads had their last day of school. Summer vacation has finally started here.
I've collected a few photos from my evening to share with you. I was invited to join a couple friends of mine downtown to tour the newly opened Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace in Prague.
And now, I invite you to traipse your way past the ginger hairball and have a peek inside the palace.
To begin I'd like to mention that I was intrigued at the invitation. The palace is still undergoing a massive reconstruction project. I have walked past this building a hundred times and barely noticed it. It stands just across the street from the eastern end of Charles Bridge. When tourists walking west from Old Town Square come to the massive, dirty, dark portal in the sorta dull pink-orange colored building (on their left), the view straight in front of them is the whomping great Gothic tower that guards the oldest bridge in Prague. And folks coming across the bridge and through the tower gate heading towards Old Town find themselves confronted with a small square lined with a number of monumental buildings to stare at. Not to mention the temptation to turn back around and enjoy the panoramic views of Prague Castle across the river:
I arrived right on time to meet my friends and took a picture of the Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace:
See the dark portal? Do you get an idea of the buildings vying for prominence in your field of vision? Yeah, I walked past it many times ...
Here we're approaching the portal. And there are my two friends striking poses from the doorway:
And in we go!
A Brief History
The Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace is a building whose earliest history is a bit foggy. The earliest records of a building on this site are from 1387 when the building was still a corner house. Portions of the peripheral walls up to the second floor are from this original structure. Evidence from the Gothic cellars suggests that the original building dated from before 1300 and was actually built on the site of two Romanesque houses.
Various owners lend the building their names over the centuries. Around 1600 the building starts making the news again. It's called the Schlick House after Count Joachim Andreas Schlick of Passaun and Holejč buys it in 1619 -- although the purchase puts him in debt to the Jesuits. When ol' Schlick then leads a rebellion against the emperor his head and right arm end up on display on the Old Town tower of Charles Bridge and the Jesuits lay claim to Schlick House as "restitution." The house is quickly sold to Duke Julius Henry of Saxe-Lauenburg in 1622 and for the same price the Jesuits buy it back in 1677. Sometime around 1700 the notorious miser Count Karl Joachim Breda gets his greedy mitts on it-- and when his "mismanagement" causes a minor revolt and a multitude of complaints the government dismisses his clerks and overseers and the Count's properties are placed under the management of a receivership by the courts. Yet it's during the Count's ownership of the house that it undergoes extensive reconstruction under the supervision of Renaissance architect Giovanni Battista Alliprandi. Eventually, In 1735, the property is bought by Paul Henry, Prince of Mansfeld-Fondi -- finally, the family from which the palace currently takes its name. It's his coat of arms that graces that portal. Then, after a bit of marrying and a confusing bit of genealogy (that is not well explained so I won't even try to translate or paraphrase it), we get Empress Marie Theresa granting the family the right to use the title of Imperial Count Colloredo-Mansfeld. And then a couple of generations later Princess Wilhelmine Colloredo-Mansfeld receives the palace as her dowry when she weds Prince Vincent of Auersperg and has the interiors renovated in 1853 in a Viennese style Rococo.
And I suppose that's a good point to break off from history and have a look around:
That statue of Neptune dominates the courtyard. Unfortunately, the cellars and stables are not yet open so we head upstairs. Signs of the exploratory work of the restoration are everywhere:
Here's a bit of Baroque decoration that someone found:
Most of the rooms however are covered in wallpaper and had large panels set up displaying information about the ongoing restoration work:
And of course, because this is the grand opening of this space to the public, we have to stop by the beverage table for a glass of wine or something:
I'd recommend sticking with the wine or water. The odd pink stuff they were offering tasted like an unpleasant combination of raspberry juice and thin vinegar. Did I overhear someone saying it was from Bulgaria? It wasn't very pleasant whatever it was or wherever it was from.
I thought the views from some of the windows were pretty impressive:
Although, stepping through a doorway and finding myself in the ballroom was nothing short of amazing:
At this point in time just the one floor of the palace is open to visitors. I spent some time talking with a person who had remembered being there when it was used as a repository of the state archives in the 1950s and 60s. My friends and I enjoyed getting this chance to look at the Viennese style interiors before they were restored to their original "icing on gingerbread" sparkle.
Well, that's about all I have for you this week. It may have not been as informative as the panels in the exhibit--
but I hope it was a refreshing change from the usual.
Thanks for stopping by!
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