I have twice previously written and posted about Pruhonice Park, a magnificent landscaped park that lies just south-east of the city of Prague. Sybille and I first visited Pruhonice Park in the summer of 2012 about which you can read and see numerous photographs here. Then in May this year, we re-visited in order to see the amazing display of flowering rhododendrons for which the park is particularly famous.
Last Monday, on my regular day-off, we made our third visit in order to see Pruhonice Park in Autumn and were not disappointed. Once more, there were remarkably few visitors and we were able to thoroughly enjoy the wonderful Autumn colours on display. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so this post will be more pictures than words.
During our visit, I took about seventy photographs and I’ve had great difficulty choosing a small number of them, with which to illustrate this post. But I hope those that follow, will give some impression of the beauty of Pruhonice Park in the Autumn.
I had not realised until I checked the park website, that it too, had suffered from the floods of early June 2013. However, as we explored the park last Monday, we saw several examples such as the one in this photograph, of trees which had been completely uprooted and fallen sideways, presumably because of floodwaters washing away the soil around their roots.
In June 2012, Sybille and I visited Pruhonice Park for the first time. In my blog post about that visit, I said that, as we had only explored about a quarter of the park, we planned to return to explore more of it at some future date. I also mentioned that Pruhonice Park is famous for is its collection of rhododendrons which flower in May. Knowing this, a return visit in May 2013 has been provisionally scheduled for some time. Therefore this week, on my day off, we finally made our second visit and saw the flowering rhododendrons in all their glory. We also got to explore some remoter areas of the park.
Rather than writing about the beautiful rhododendrons in all their immense variety of colours, this is an occasion when one picture can take the place of a thousand words. So here are a selection of photographs that I took during our visit earlier this week which I hope give some indication of the beauty of this UNESCO World Heritage Site and Czech National Historic Landmark.
The park contains many tree species from around the world. This is what is commonly known as a handkerchief tree, whose natural habitat is southern China.
Monday each week, is meant to be my ‘day-off’. But when I live on-the-job with the office next door to my bedroom, it is very difficult to have a proper day-off unless I get completely away from the Chaplaincy Flat. So I’m determined during these coming summer weeks, to take a proper day-off and get out and about to see more of Prague and the surrounding Czech countryside.
Therefore last Monday 18th June, Sybille and I made a start in making that determination a reality. We went out for the day to visit a place that has been on our ‘to visit list’ for quite some time – Pruhonice Park.
Pruhonice Park lies south-east of Prague, a little beyond the city boundary in the Central Bohemia Region. It was still very easy to get there by public transport – a combination of tram, metro and bus. But because our final destination Pruhonice, lies just beyond the city boundary, we were obliged to pay an additional CZK 12/£0.36 each because our ‘Open Cards’ for the integrated Prague public transport system, only cover us when travelling within the city boundary. However, one has to say that this hardly breaks the bank 🙂
The park itself was founded by Count Arnošt Emanuel Silva-Tarouca in 1885. He took advantage of the existing small river valleys to create a series of lakes and introduced an amazing variety of trees, some native to Central Europe but with others from elsewhere in the world. The result is, ‘a masterpiece of garden landscape architecture that is of worldwide importance’, to quote the publicity leaflet we were given.
The entrance to the park, which is spread out over 250 hectares, is alongside an amazing Zámek/Chateau which you can see in the photograph at the beginning of this post. The Zámek/Chateau itself is not open to the public as it is the HQ of the Botanical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. But it is still possible to enjoy the exterior of the building which is beautifully decorated as you can see in these two photographs.
Our visit coincided with the hottest day so far of the 2012 summer so we were glad to be able to enjoy walking along gravel tracks which were frequently well shaded by the many magnificent trees. One of numerous things that Pruhonice Park is famous for is its collection of rhododendrons. These bloom during May so our visit was a little late to enjoy what is apparently a spectacular sight when they are all flowering. We only got to see the very last of the blooms in a few sheltered spots.
What did surprise us was how few other visitors there were. Apparently a lot of Czech families do visit at weekends but on a hot, sunny Monday in June, we shared the park with only a handful of other people.
Another surprise was the complete absence of anywhere within the park grounds where it was possible to buy a ‘cool glass of something’. We were therefore most thankful that we had thought to pack a two litre bottle of sparling mineral water in my rucksack, before setting out for the day.
On this visit, we only got to see about a quarter of the area of the park so we shall certainly return to explore some more. I’m also sure that it must look magnificent in the Autumn with the changing colours of the leaves and I’ve already made a mental note to visit next May to see the rhododendrons in bloom.
Below are two more images of Pruhonice Park which I hope will illustrate the beauty and peace of this delightful location in the Czech Republic.
