Queen Anne's Summer Palace — Renaissance Beauty at Prague Castle

Most visitors to Prague Castle follow the crowds through the main courtyards, see St. Vitus Cathedral, walk the Golden Lane, and leave. Almost nobody turns north through the gate into the Royal Garden, where one of the finest Renaissance buildings north of the Alps stands in near-solitude. Queen Anne's Summer Palace, also known as the Belvedere, is a building that belongs more to Florence than to Bohemia — and on a quiet morning, you might have the colonnade to yourself.

We walk our guests here on our All Prague in One Day private tour, timing the visit so the light catches the arcade just right. The reaction is always the same: how did we not know this existed?

Why Ferdinand Built a Palace for His Wife

Emperor Ferdinand I commissioned the Summer Palace in 1538 as a gift for his wife, Queen Anne Jagiellon. The architect was the Italian Paolo della Stella, who designed the arcaded ground floor with its delicate relief panels. These 36 reliefs — carved directly into the soft sandstone — depict mythological scenes, hunting episodes, and botanical motifs that still hold remarkable detail after nearly five centuries.

Construction took decades. A fire interrupted the work in 1541, and the building was not completed until 1563 — by which time Queen Anne had been dead for sixteen years. She never set foot in her palace. The upper floor, with its distinctive copper ship-keel roof, was finished by Bonifác Wohlmut, a German architect who gave the building its unusual curved ceiling.

The ground-floor arcade wraps entirely around the building with no interruption — a feature borrowed from Italian loggia design but executed at a scale and refinement unprecedented in Central Europe at the time. Art historians consider it the purest Italian Renaissance structure outside Italy.

The Singing Fountain — Put Your Ear to the Bronze

Directly in front of the palace stands the Singing Fountain, cast in bronze between 1564 and 1568 by the bell-maker Tomáš Jaroš. On first glance, it looks like a standard Renaissance fountain — two tiers, decorative figures, water cascading from the upper basin.

The trick is acoustic. Stand close to the lower basin, lean your head just inside the rim, and listen. The water striking the bronze creates a faint, resonant tone — almost musical. The "singing" is subtle, not a dramatic effect, and it works best when the surrounding garden is quiet. Early morning or late afternoon, when tour groups thin out, gives you the best chance of hearing it clearly.

The fountain weighs roughly 1,700 kilograms and was cast from a single mould. The bronze surface has developed a deep green patina that photographs beautifully against the pale stone of the palace arcade behind it.

One practical detail: the fountain runs seasonally, typically from April through October, matching the garden's opening schedule. In winter, the water is shut off and the singing stops entirely.