What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 23 July 2022.

Pod Parukářkou was built in 1997.

Parukářka is the name of a former vineyard and farm, founded in the 15th century and located on the eastern part of Vrch svatého Kříže / Hill of the Holy Cross, though it was initially called Hejtmánka.

From 1804, the homestead also housed a wig factory. The is where the name Parukářka comes from (paruka is Czech for ‘wig’, very similar to the German Perücke).

In 1825, Sellier and Bellot (see https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2022/11/22/prague-3-day-74-ke-kapslovne/) purchased it and founded the Kapslovna factory.

Parukářka is now the name of a park in this location with excellent views of Prague.

If I can turn this series a bit Ed Talks for a second: I took a couple of pretty big knocks, mentally speaking, in 2019.

Hard to explain, and almost trivial-sounding when I do, but the kind you don’t bounce back from that easily, especially when 2019 + 1 = 2020.

But Parukářka will always be the place where, last year, I sat with a friend, stared at Žižkov down below, said very little, listened to myself breathing, and felt like I was possibly getting my sh*t together.

So I’m pretty grateful it’s there.