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Čížov summerhouse on a drawing from the end of the 18th century

Čížov folly today

Plan of the game reserve between Vranov and Lesná from late 18th century

Hilgartner plan of the so-called Rose Hill, late 18th century

The Philosophers’ House on a drawing from the end of the 18th century

Ruins of the Philosophers’ House on Rose Hill

Forest park

The park has always been an important part of the representative estate of Vranov. The landscape design took advantage of the wooded and hilly terrain, and the result is an aesthetically impressive and ecologically valuable landscape complex with a system of paths, clearings, vistas, viewpoints, resting places with stone benches, lakes with artificial waterfalls, game preserves, as well as various follies such as miniature antique temples, chapels, crosses, and family memorials.

The park was established gradually from the mid-18th century, when the son of Marie Anna Pignatelli, general Michael Anthony Althann, who was a passionate hunter, built the Čížov folly - the centre of the later wild boar reserve. The first layout adjustments to the future lavishly designed landscape were made in the 1780's by his nephew and the last Althann of Vranov, Michael Joseph. He established the Braitava folly, the English park with pavilions, temples, and grottoes on the Rose Hill opposite the chateau, as well as the stone bridge in today's Junácké valley, changed the design of both the terraces next to the Hall of Ancestors and turned them into gardens, built the House of Philosophers, as well as the farm buildings opposite the chateau - at that time they were probably built of wood. He also initiated extensive surveying and a complex forest management and cultivation plan. His landscape design ideas were really bold from the very beginning, and represented a solid basis for his successors who continued to implement them.

One such person was the knight Joseph Hilgartner von Lilienborn, whose ideas about extensive and mainly realised adjustments to the park are in detail documented by the five ideal plans that he ordered to be made in the 1790's. From these plans it is clear that the new concept included some of the older landscape adjustment (tree avenues, streams, lakes, irregularly winding paths, follies, etc.). A new feature was probably the geometrically exact roads on a star-like layout, which all joined in a centre that was highlighted by a landmark, representing a target to which the wanderer or a hunter walking or riding through the country are bound to get eventually. The plans, as a complex work, suggest various forms and roles of the cultivated landscape that were common for their author's period - at that time landscape was perceived mainly as a place of rest, and as the subject of aesthetic contemplation. It also represented - as a feature with a strong imaginative charge - a complex of symbolic objects with philosophical, moral, or even secret, occult, and political interpretations. Hilgartner himself did a great deal of the landscape adjustment plans and ideas, which is explicitly mentioned in the period documents. He established the wild boar reserve near Čížov, the game reserve by Vracovice, the pheasantry by Šumná, partly reconstructed the wooden farmhouses in front of the chateau and turned them into horse stables and carriage sheds, established the two new villages of Lesná and Šumná, and completed also the English park on the Rose Hill - one of his works is for instance the Temple of Diana, which was later consecrated as the chapel of St. Mary as ordered by Helena von Mniszek.

Another owner - count Stanislav von Mniszek - carried out some minor adjustments in the first half of the 19th century, which included for example the Empire-style reconstruction of the carriage shed and the stables. His descendants added more small buildings to the landscape, which were inspired by the late Romantic period - various gazebos, memorial obelisks, and small sacral structures.

From the 1930's, the park suffered from chronic neglect and loss of creativity, its beauty and elegance gradually faded away, and the trees were slowly dying out. At the end of 1980's its condition was disastrous - most of the vistas were lost and overgrown, as well as the clearings and communications, the buildings dilapidated, the once thriving forests and groves were turning into dense bushes of self-seeding plants, and all was damaged by incorrect management that did not respect its original concept.

After the establishment of the Podyjí National Park in 1992, the situation began to change gradually. Thanks to the National Park Management, as well as to the Forests of the Czech Republic and Municipality of Vranov, some of the functions of the historic park were gradually retrieved and re-established. The half-dilapidated folly in Braitava was reconstructed, as well as the Čížov folly, and chapel of Virgin Mary the Protector, gamekeeper's lodge in Braitava, Felicity's spring, the so-called Halamaschek viewpoint below the chateau, small folly in front of the original aristocratic court, and radical reconstruction of the forest road from the parking lot to the chateau. Tourist routes were established that make the Rose Hill accessible, as well as the Cross Hill, Felicity's valley, Junácké valley, and also some of the more distant places of natural interest. More information on sights in the town of Vranov nad Dyjí.