Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/54

40 been built under Archbishop Přichovský by the Prague architect Vlach in the XVIIIth. century. The beautiful palace-chapel, is remarkable for its paintings of the end of the XVIth. century, works of the Bohemian artist Daniel Alexius z Květné. The entrance-hall of the palace has some fine figural sgrafitti from the XVIth. century. Through a little lane which is accessible by one of the arches of the archbishop’s palace house (now an institution for the teaching of idiots) we enter a building that vies in beauty with the palace itself. The lane brings us directly to the porch and court of the Sternberg house which give us an idea of the splendid appointments of the inside. The large halls of the upper floor are covered with beautiful stucco-work with quite a gorgeous ornamentation of frescoes, from aan [sic] unknown painter, which represents allegorically the heavenly sight, among them the star, the emblem of the family of Sternberg.

We retrace our steps to the square and find ourselves on the esplanade before the renowned old Royal Castle; perhaps the most beautiful spot of Prague, a subject of wonder to strangers and the Bohemian nation, proud of its great and glorious past, an object of national veneration. Before we enter the Castle, let us take a look around the esplanade. In the front, we see upon high pedestals within the railing which divides the inner front-court from the esplanade, Platzer’s powerful statues of the gigantes, and beyond them, Scamozzi’s façade of the castle of the time of Matthew II.; to the right the two Schwarzenberg palaces,—the new, and the older one which dates from 1556, and used to be the proud seat of tbe Lobkovic family. It is adorned with two richly-artic ulated gables, the black filigree ornaments of which have the shape of a medieval fan of reticelli-lace. In the wide space between these objects, there stands in sharp outlinnesoutlines [sic], a pillar of the Virgin Mary, close to the spot, where in olden times used to be a chapel of St. Mary of Einsiedeln. Here too we enjoy perhaps the most perfect view of the Petřín. A little farther on, at the very edge of the Castle-approach there is a statue of the patron-saint of the Bohemian nation St. Wenceslas, as if he wanted to bless the capital spreading over the wide dale up to the surrounding hills. From the