The Four Seasons, Antonio Vivaldi’s world-famous violin concertos, sound best in Prague. Indeed, Vivaldi composed them specifically for the city, having dedicated them to his patron, Count Wenceslas of Morzin, whose magnificent Baroque palace you can still admire in Lesser Town on the way to Prague Castle. The Italian composer and violin virtuoso Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) and the Prague-based noble music lover Count Wenceslas of Morzin met in Mantua in 1718. From then on, Vivaldi worked as the symbolic “maestro di cappella” of the count’s musical ensemble at the Morzin Palace in Prague, with the count paying Vivaldi a regular fee. In 1725, Vivaldi published a collection of 12 concertos in Amsterdam under the title Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention), which included The Four Seasons. On the title page, the composer dedicated the entire collection to Count Wenceslas of Morzin. It is therefore quite possible that the iconic string choir at the beginning of Vivaldi’s Spring Sonata, celebrating the awakening of nature, the singing of birds and the bubbling of streams, was first heard in Lesser Town. Moreover, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons cycle resonates harmoniously with the sculptural decoration on the facade of the Morzin Palace, created by the distinguished Baroque sculptor Ferdinand Maxmilián Brokoff and depicting the allegorical figures of the Four World Continents and Day and Night. Vrtba Garden | Photo: Prague City Tourism Some years later, Antonio Vivaldi began composing music for his other Prague patron, Count Jan Josef of Vrtba. Among other things, he composed a concerto for lute and strings for him, first performed at one of the most charming places in Prague – the terraced Vrtbovská Garden on the slopes of Petřín Hill. The third Prague count among Vivaldi’s patrons was František Antonín Špork. A passionate lover of music and hunting, he introduced the French horn to Bohemia. Count Špork founded a theatre in his Prague palace on Hybernská Street, where he showed six of Vivaldi’s operas, two of which were composed specifically for Prague: Argippo and Alvilda, Regina de’ Goti, whose world premieres were conducted here by the composer himself. The librettos of Vivaldi’s Prague operas are still kept at the Jesuit Clementinum, today the National Library of the Czech Republic. More original scores of Vivaldi’s compositions are kept in the music collection of the Knights of the Red Star of the Teutonic Order, the only male order in the world founded by a woman. Its monastery is located directly opposite the Clementinum, just a few steps across the street, next to the Old Town tower of Charles Bridge. Three centuries ago, unusual tones began to echo through the narrow streets of Baroque Prague. They resounded with the restlessness of the sea, the sparkle of the sun over the lagoon, the wind scented by sea salt, and were brought to Prague by a man in a priest’s robe with fiery hair and sharp eyes: Antonio Vivaldi. Prague has a special talent for not only receiving music, but also transforming it. Vivaldi was not just a guest here – he became an inspiration for Czech music and was himself inspired by it. Prague remembers Vivaldi not as a stranger, but as a pilgrim through Europe who left his mark here. And within the stone walls of Prague’s palaces, Vivaldi’s music still sounds as if the “maestro di cappella” had never left.