26o 



GARDEN CRAFT IN EUROPE 



for laying out the gardens still exists in the library. Sans Souci is a kind of 

 miniature Versailles, and was the King's favourite retreat ; here it was that 

 he first met Voltaire, July lo, 1750. The one-storied casino, decorated 

 with a row of caryatides supporting the cornice, stands upon a hill with six 

 formal terraces descending in concave form to a large circular fountain pool 

 below. The terraces were intended for fruit cultivation, but the long rows 

 of orange trees and glass-houses have now disappeared, and specimen shrubs 

 have taken away much of the charm these terraces must have had when 

 they were first laid out by the royal architect. 



SCHLOSSHOF. 



The largest and most important of the older Austrian gardens is that 

 of the Palace of Schonbrunn (illus., p. 259), two miles east of Vienna, the 

 summer residence of the Emperor of Austria. Like Versailles, the palace had 

 its origin in a small hunting lodge, built by the Emperor Maximilian II, 

 in 1570. It was rebuilt in 1619 and again after the Turkish siege of Vienna 

 in 1696, this time from the designs of the Court architect, Fischer von Erlach. 

 An English traveller who visited Schonbrunn in 1676 says that the gardens 

 were neglected and ruinous ; they consisted of two large square parterres 

 about the size of the Palais Royal at Paris. He speaks of pavilions in the 

 garden with roofs of copper so burnished " that the common people think 



