Vivarium Grébovka • Vivarium Gröbovka • Vivarium v Havlíčkových sadech

In 1905 the Gröbe family sold his villa (Villa Gröbe) with a garden to the Prague community Královské Vinohrady (Royal Vinohrady). A year later, the garden was open to the public as Havlíčkovy sady (Havlíček's garden), there was a restaurant, dance floor in an manmade grotto and vivarium - a small zoo - greenhouse full of palms and other tropical plants, aquariums and cages, which reportedly reminded the Orinoco from books by known (and in the time popular) traveller Enrique Stanko Vráz. There were seen fish, turtles, crocodiles, alligators, kangaroos (fotball team of Bohemians got them in Australia), monkeys (Rhesus macaques), lioness, bears, parrots, but also a show with sniffer dogs. At the end of the World War II (14 th February 1945) sixty American airplanes mistook Prague for Dresden and bombed the allied city. The villa was damaged and the vivarium destroyed. Some animals escaped. The police reputedly had to hunt down the bear (and perhaps a couple of crocodiles), which was wandering freely around the bombed Prague. The vivarium stood at the Northern Gate of Havlíčkovy sady (at place of Homestead Větrovka), today a children's playground is in that place.