A_Schloss_Hellbrunn_Salzburg_17
Main water parterre, with the decorative "Monatschlössl" casino.
The gardens of Hellbrunn, laid out 1613-1619, are Austria’s most notable Italianate gardens. Despite the baroque origin, Hellbrunn has a strong renaissance feel and features making it perhaps the single garden most capable of evoking earlier (and lost) examples of Italian water gardens such as Pratolino, which had directly influenced its creation.
Designed by Santino Solari for Marcus Sitticus, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, Hellbrunn is a summer palace mostly intended for entertainment and leisure. Subsequently, the entire layout is riddled with literally countless water features, follies, grottos, sculptures, giochi d’aqua (trick jets) and, most remarkably, some of the best surviving and functional examples of automata (water-propelled animated figures).
The small castle itself is lined with elaborate grottos, including a Neptune grotto, rain grotto, a mirror grotto, a mock “ruined” vault and several automata including pneumatic bird-song. To the north of the house, an extraordinarily intact garden sequence features ponds and grottos surrounding an al-fresco stone table, similar to the one at Villa Lante but riddled with countless trick water jets.
Opposite, from a sunken star-shaped pond, a long narrow canal passes out which is lined with a multitude of grottoes, cascades, sculpture groups, water-plays and animated automata, terminating in a mechanical theatre and a grotto-pavilion featuring a levitating crown supported by a water jet.
Beyond, to the south-east of the house the large main water parterre remains from an earlier, more elobarate layout around an artificial hill topped by a summer house, now entirely vanished. Only the parterre’s fish ponds survived later alterations in the French and English style, overlooked by the decorative folly “Monatsschlössl”, a miniature castle erected in one month.
A_Schloss_Hellbrunn_Salzburg_17
Main water parterre, with the decorative "Monatschlössl" casino.
The gardens of Hellbrunn, laid out 1613-1619, are Austria’s most notable Italianate gardens. Despite the baroque origin, Hellbrunn has a strong renaissance feel and features making it perhaps the single garden most capable of evoking earlier (and lost) examples of Italian water gardens such as Pratolino, which had directly influenced its creation.
Designed by Santino Solari for Marcus Sitticus, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, Hellbrunn is a summer palace mostly intended for entertainment and leisure. Subsequently, the entire layout is riddled with literally countless water features, follies, grottos, sculptures, giochi d’aqua (trick jets) and, most remarkably, some of the best surviving and functional examples of automata (water-propelled animated figures).
The small castle itself is lined with elaborate grottos, including a Neptune grotto, rain grotto, a mirror grotto, a mock “ruined” vault and several automata including pneumatic bird-song. To the north of the house, an extraordinarily intact garden sequence features ponds and grottos surrounding an al-fresco stone table, similar to the one at Villa Lante but riddled with countless trick water jets.
Opposite, from a sunken star-shaped pond, a long narrow canal passes out which is lined with a multitude of grottoes, cascades, sculpture groups, water-plays and animated automata, terminating in a mechanical theatre and a grotto-pavilion featuring a levitating crown supported by a water jet.
Beyond, to the south-east of the house the large main water parterre remains from an earlier, more elobarate layout around an artificial hill topped by a summer house, now entirely vanished. Only the parterre’s fish ponds survived later alterations in the French and English style, overlooked by the decorative folly “Monatsschlössl”, a miniature castle erected in one month.