Schuetzen Palace Audio guide

A Palace on the Site of Older Buildings

Schuetzen Palace on Sněmovní Street in Lesser Town ranks among the less conspicuous but historically highly valuable urban residences. It was built between 1685 and 1699 on the site of two medieval houses and the Church of St Michael with its cemetery. This layered ground plan is typical of Lesser Town, where early modern aristocratic residences often took over older plot divisions and parts of earlier structures.

The property also includes a garden, which is important not only as a complement to the palace, but also as evidence of the development of palace gardens below Prague Castle. The garden has survived as part of a broader urban ensemble that took shape from the turn of the 17th century.

Architecture and Layout

The palace has an irregular four-wing layout with an inner courtyard. The main facade is two stories high, slightly angled, and bears the hallmarks of early Baroque, the style that shaped the appearance of representative urban residences in Prague after the Thirty Years' War. The ground floor is decorated with rustication, the entrance portal has a stone surround, and an asymmetrically placed belvedere extension was added later.

In the courtyard there is a well with a granite lining. Another interesting feature is that part of the Church of St Michael was incorporated directly into the building of the house. A Romanesque burial ground has been documented in the upper parts of the garden, showing the exceptional continuity of settlement at this site.

The Garden and Later Modifications

The garden acquired its composition under the ownership of the Counts of Klenova and Janovice in the eighteenth century. The regular layout with an axis between the entrance from the garden facade and the enclosing wall is still visible today, although later building interventions partially altered its appearance. In the 1930s, the garden wing was extended and the terrace was replaced by a new wall with arcades. Its present condition is the result of restoration work carried out in the 1980s.