ORANŽÉRIE

History of Oranžérie

• 1620 – 1783

  The large garden and vineyard became the property of Jaroslav Borzita of Martinice after the lost battle of White Mountain and the defeat of the Bohemians and mercenaries under Christian of Anhalt. They donated it in 1666 to the Theatines, an Italian order founded by St. Kajetan, who built the Oranžérie in 1760 in the north of the estate.

• 1783 – 1830

  During the reign of Emperor Joseph II in 1783 the Kajetánka monastery was closed down. The property then passed into the hands of several owners, among them the Kounic family, who turned the garden into an English park and had many kinds of trees imported, some of which decorate Kajetánka to this day.

• 1830 – 1938

  By the 1930s Kajetánka was the site of a wax canvas factory, which burned out in later years. Oranžérie was then rebuilt into flats by a new owner in 1845 and in 1903, the local mayor and entrepreneur Jan Kolátor bought Kajetánka and enriched the park with an orchard and sculptures by Vojtěch Sucharda.

• 1938 – 2014

  After Jan Kolátor’s death, Kajetánka remained the property of the family until it was nationalized in 1948 by the socialist regime. During the regime, the estate became a youth centre for the Communist party Pioneers and a social center for leisure time for the inhabitants of Břevnov. This situation remained until the Velvet Revolution in 1989 when the restitution claims caused the reconstruction, which started in the 1960s, to be stopped. It led to the gradual devastation of the park and deterioration of buildings. Only now, the owners of Kajetánka and the city district of Prague 6 are restoring its former glory.

• Present

  The Orangerie is currently the headquarters of Keen Software House and GoodAI.
  Keen Software House is an independent game development studio best known for its best-seller Space Engineers (4 million copies sold). GoodAI, is a general AI research company building human-level artificial intelligence. The two companies are made up of over 100 researchers, developers, engineers, programmers, artists, and more.