English Translation

The three-fold arch of the "Sala terrena" appears and towers of the stalactite wall. Rarely has an imperial castle found such a magnificent foundation as the Hradcshin to Prague in the Loggia Wallensteins. Below the wide-spread palace, above the roofs of St. Thomas and the mists of the small side rise floating the dome of the Nikls Church — but everything is covered, from Strahov to the Belvedere, from the wide swing of the castle mountain. One must have experienced one of those warm spring evenings in the garden at the Loggia – as roaring baroque music flowed from the triple circle, as shimmering fountains in arbour and the grottoes spran- gen and Adrian de Vriesen's nymphs, centaurs, ama- zones, the treeed horses and the hero Heracles took on ghostly life in the magical light of the festive lighting — one must have sunk in this sense rush of a reborn Baroque when the voices of the old masters led to thought in the frescoed hall or the sounds of the immortal Wolfgang Amadeus pearled and enchanted, enchanted and forced, if you were entirely enraptured to the whole of beauty — then you will remain forever in the spell of a conquering city. Prague, the political city, the metropolis of many contrasts, the restless from the very beginning – it splintered from the Dionysian underground of its ever-living Zwic- the apollinian beauty of an artistic harmony. And if one then ascends from the palace of the coming up to the pleasure of the king, then with the power phary also vaster and greater the gestures of building widens. You walk like a temple cella through the arcades of Ferdinand's Belvedere. Graceful marble columns carry a festive giant baldachin, from all sides the greatness and beauty of the city penetrates through the arches to you. It is as if the wide panorama was only there to be admired from here, the pleasure castle of a queen. Driiben, however, rises above the freshness of the deer ditch Wullensteins Halfe / From a steel engraving after a drawing by Ludwig Lange