Stromovka, officially Královská obora (the Royal Game Reserve), is a park in Prague's cadastral area of Bubeneč. It is one of the largest landscape parks in the city, made up of floodplain sections by the Vltava and wooded slopes with views of the Troja basin.[1] The park is owned by the City of Prague; the greenery is managed by the environmental department of Prague City Hall and maintenance is provided by Lesy hl. m. Prahy.[1] City Hall gives its area as 96.7 ha. Since 1988 the Royal Game Reserve has been protected as a natural monument.[1]*
Hunting reserve
The hunting reserve was probably founded by Ottokar II in 1268. Over the following centuries it was plundered by armies several times and restored each time.[1] From about 1500 the reserve was opened to the public on the feast of St Gotthard.[1] After 1547 a larger pond was created and trees brought from Šárka were planted. In 1559 a wall divided it into an eastern game reserve with a summer house and a western pheasantry with a gamekeeper's lodge, later an orchard; this division lasted until the 19th century.[1] Under Rudolf II the pond was enlarged, and an island, today's oak mound, was later formed in it.[1]
Water was brought to the pond from the Vltava by the Rudolf Tunnel running beneath Letná. Rudolf II ordered its construction in 1583; excavation began in spring 1584 under Lazarus Ercker von Schreckenfels and was completed in 1593.[2] The tunnel is 1,102 metres long, two to three metres high and up to one metre wide. Its mouth in the reserve is marked by a stone portal bearing the year 1593, the imperial crown and Rudolf's monogram.[2] The work is documented in a plan by the court clerk Isaac Phendler, kept in the National Technical Museum.[2]
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Public park
In the 1740s the reserve was devastated by military campaigns. In 1804, largely thanks to Count Chotek, it was opened to the public and began to be transformed into a landscape park.[1] The pond was drained.[2] To irrigate the park, a waterworks house at the tunnel mouth received in 1859 a water wheel 4.8 metres in diameter that pumped water to a reservoir near the summer house; it was replaced by a turbine in 1923.[2] In 1861 the Mescery carriage road was built between the Royal Hall and the Governor's Summer Palace, and a rose garden followed in 1884–1885.[1]
The connection between the reserve and the river was cut in 1840–1845 by the Prague–Dresden railway, and the southern edge was affected by the Buštěhrad Railway in 1867.[1] Shortly before Holešovice was annexed to Prague, a horse tram was built from Petrské náměstí to Stromovka; it was electrified in 1898.[3] The eastern part of the park hosted the Jubilee Exhibition of 1891 and has since formed the separate Výstaviště exhibition grounds.[1]
Floods and restoration
The floods of 2002 and 2013 seriously damaged the park.[1][3] In 2015–2018 the bed of the former pond was restored. The original water system, viewpoints and footbridges were repaired, new water areas were created in the wettest spots and the oak mound became an island again. Piers, playgrounds and a reading corner with a small library were added, and new trees were planted.[1]
Today
The centre of the park is the promenade with flower beds in front of the Šlechta restaurant and the area between the dykes of the former Rudolf Pond. Its system of small ponds is still fed by the Rudolf Tunnel, and double-sided avenues survive on the dykes.[1] The park contains the Governor's Summer Palace and the planetarium.[1] The planetarium building was designed by Jaroslav Fragner.[3] Plants by the water include the white water lily, yellow iris and broadleaf cattail; animals include the green toad, black-crowned night heron, middle spotted woodpecker, ten species of bats and the stag beetle.[1] According to a 2021 count, at least 3.2 million visits were made to the park in a year, 88 per cent of them by Prague residents.[1]