Letenské sady is a city park on the slopes of Letná above the Vltava. According to the portal Pražská příroda, the Letná plateau with its adjoining slopes has served since time immemorial as an assembly point and encampment for troops, and celebrations were held there as well, among them the coronation of Ottokar II of Bohemia in 1261.[1] Czech Television notes that in the past the plateau was tied to the army as a military drill ground, whereas it serves rather recreation and sport.[2]
Earlier use of the slope
From the 13th century vines were grown on the slope and quarries were opened there. In 1582 the Rudolfova štola, an adit about a kilometre long, was built below the slope; it carried water from the Vltava to the ponds in Královská obora. In 1635 the Cyriac order built the chapel of St Mary Magdalene at the foot of the slope; in the 1950s it was moved behind the embankment road. In 1715 František Valdštejn had the vineyard manor Belvedere built on the edge of the slope; French troops led by de Broglie demolished it in 1742, and an inn later stood on its site. In the last quarter of the 18th century a system of fortifications was built on Letná, with the last works carried out in 1813. Traces of it survived until the construction of the Stalin Monument in the 1950s, and the bastions on the western boundary still stand.[1]
Founding of the park
The Prague municipality gradually bought up the Letná plots so that a public park could be created on them. After 1860 the park was laid out and landscaped in a historicist landscape and neoclassical style, mostly on the site of the vineyards of Baron Jakub Wimmer, who owned most of the Letná land at the beginning of the 19th century. The founding of the park came mainly from the activity of the Beautification Society for tree planting, initiated by Baron Mescery de Tsoor. The plan was drawn up by the gardener Bedřich Wünscher and elaborated by Jiří Braul from Královská obora. Planting began west of the restaurant, at the site of the present-day Hanavský Pavilion, and bare slopes were afforested at the same time.[1]
A Neo-Renaissance restaurant designed by Ignác V. Ullmann was built in 1863 at approximately the site of the Belvedere summer palace. After 1866 came the grading of the terrain, the laying of paths and the planting of the slopes along the whole length of Letná; about 150 thousand trees were planted and the founding cost 12,000 gulden. From the start the park had an irrigation system fed by five collecting reservoirs. At the end of the 1880s František Thomayer, then director of the city parks, took part in shaping the park; the promenade strip with a double avenue in the eastern part is connected with his experience from France.[1]