What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 6 July 2022.

Ke Kapslovně was built in 1975, but was called U Stadionu (Stadium) until 2008.

Louis Sellier and Jean Maria Nicolaus Bellot founded a company, Sellier & Bellot, in Žižkov in 1825, which made cartridges for infantry, as well as matches (up to 60 million per year). The factory, operating from 1827, was called Kapslovna.

Despite their very French names, Sellier and Bellot didn’t just rock up from abroad and set up shop – Sellier was a Czech-German of French origin, whereas Bellot was a Czech with French roots.

The business grew and grew, which ultimately became incompatible with the growth of Žižkov as a residential area – so, in 1936, the factory moved to Vlasim near Tábor (where, in 2018, it had almost 1,600 employees and annual turnover of 4.3 billion CZK).

A biathlon club – now a member of the Czech Biathlon Union, and with a nice website at https://kapslovna.cz – was opened in the factory’s location in 1975. Presumably this is also the ‘stadium’ that gave the street its first name.

It organises the biggest biathlon event in Prague, the Žižkovské stuhy, and has an active social media presence on https://facebook.com/KlubBiatlonuKapslovna….

Unsurprisingly, given its origins, Kapslovna also operates a shooting range.