SUMMARY
In looking at landscapes we perceive their present state first of all. However, some facts in the memory of landscapes are not visible, or are not obvious at the first glance. That is the case of the forgotten landscape – French Baroque-Rococo garden in Iliašovce, in the region of Spiš.
The summer residence with the famous garden, built by Count István Csáky and his wife Júlia Erdődy in 1776, was named by their contemporaries the “New Sans Souci”. We know about its original appearance only from literary and archival sources describing the beauties of this garden.
The history of decay and destruction of the garden is emblazoned with legends about the end of love and the careless life-style of the noble couple. This once famous garden is now an object of interest for garden architecture history as a representative of a French model of Baroque-Rococo gardens in the Slovak territory. Its design was inspired by the famous gardens of that period, such as the garden of the “Chateau Sans Souci” of Frederick the Great in Potsdam.
There is not much preserved from the former summer palace and gardens there, but their imprints in the landscape have not yet vanished. Fragments of architecture known from historical maps are still legible in the contemporary landscape in the form of views and sceneries. Their historical and landscape value emphasizes the need to protect and preserve the site and to find new approaches to its presentation.