Garden Museum

Room 18 – Festivities and games in the garden

 

The Baroque garden provided a setting for magnificent festivities. The usual forms of entertainment included plays, fireworks, gondola rides, banquets and hunts; these occasions also provided the prince with an opportunity to display his wealth and status. The theatrical productions were the highpoint, with the prince himself often taking one of the roles.

Among the amusements for the court were games and items such as roundabouts and seesaws, which were only used solely by children from the 19th century on. Many of the games, such as pall-mall, are the predecessors of modern leisure pursuits. Special gardens for children, from which the modern kindergarten was later to develop, were not introduced until the 19th century.

Animals have always been kept in gardens. In the Baroque age, the menageries with their exotic animals such as lions, long-tailed monkeys and parrots also fulfilled representative purposes.