Sklenářka

This valuable Baroque building, a listed heritage site, has stood on its solitary spot overlooking the zoo for nearly four centuries.

The Sklenářka building is a striking landmark in the landscape. The slopes around it are also home to several rare species, such as European ground squirrels. The enclosure in the foreground forms part of the project aimed at bringing them back. Photo: Petr Hamerník, Prague Zoo

Sklenářka was likely built at the end of the 17^th century as a vineyard estate. The vineyards that once surrounded it have, however, long since disappeared, and the building found a new purpose in the mid-20^th century, when it began to be used as accommodation for zoo staff. Between 2011 and 2012, it underwent a sensitive restoration that preserved as many of its original structural and decorative features as possible, including painted ceiling beams and antique windows. Spanning three floors, the elegant interiors now serve as a residence for distinguished official guests of Prague Zoo.

The Sklenářka’s interiors in 2014, shortly after its restoration. Photo: Tomáš Adamec, Prague Zoo

Valuable, however, is not only the Sklenářka building itself, but also the landscape in its immediate surroundings. The sunny slopes, registered together with Hrachovka as a significant landscape feature, harbour a xerothermic steppe grassland community inhabited by several rare butterfly species, such as the Oberthür’s grizzled skipper (Pyrgus armoricanus), the chalkhill blue (Polyommatus coridon) and the spurge hawk-moth (Hyles euphorbiae). Prague Zoo is also working, through its in-situ projects, to bring back butterfly species that have disappeared from the area—for example the critically endangered eastern baton blue (Pseudophilotes vicrama) or the European ground squirrel (Spermophilus citellus).