The Flower Garden

THE FLOWER GARDEN - UNSECO SITE

The Flower Garden has been enlisted to UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage List along with the Archbishop's Chateau in 1998.

HISTORY

The entry building of the garden was projected by architect Antonín Arch in a distinct classicist style of 1840s. The big greenhouses accompanying the entry building were built in the same era. During the Austrian Imperial constituent diet in 1848, the building was home to historian Vácslav Vladivoj Tomek. The Flower Garden alone has developed throughout centuries since 1665 when the Bishop of Lichtenstein had local swamps drained and converted to a unique garden designed in, back then modern, French style. The garden is bounded by a colonnade which features 44 statues of old Greek and Roman gods as well as important antiquity personas. There is a gate in the middle of the colonnade which used to be the main entrance to the garden. On outside, it is decorated by a bishop's bust with engraved saying in Czech and Latin "Let you enter, visitors!"

In the center of the Flower Garden, there is a baroque rotunda which is richly decorated with frescoes and stucco. The alleys of the garden all lead toward the rotunda which stands in the center of this unique garden from the era of absolute monarchy when both people and nature were to obey the emperor. When finished in 1691, the garden was drawn by Georg Matthäus Vischer and engraved by a famous Dutch catographer and engraver Justus Van den Nypoort. Last but not least, we need to mention the artists who, according to basic sketches of the Olomouc Bishop, designed the garden itself. Among others, impressive work was done by architects Filibert Luches and Giovanni Pietro Tencalla as well as by sculptor Michael Mandík. The Flower Garden is a national monument of paramount importance.