What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 28 September 2022.

Jičínská was built in 1910.

Jičín is a town of 16,000 people in the Hradec Králové Region. Initially a royal town, Jan Lucemburský sold it to the Vartenberk family in 1337.

It really started to expand in 1621, when it was purchased by the military leader Albrecht von Wallenstein (who fought on the victorious Catholic side at Bílá Hora the year before).

Wallenstein / Valdštejn chose Jičín as the capital of his de facto sovereign Duchy of Friedland (Frýdlantské vévodství). He called in Italian architects to make improvements to the city.

After his death, the city was looted by the Swedes and forcibly re-Catholicised.

The 19th century saw the city become one of the centres of the Czech National Revival (František Ladislav Rieger taught at the gymnasium here), and also saw a key battle of the Austro-Prussian War in 1866.

During the 1968 invasion, a drunk Polish soldier shot dead a man and a woman in the centre of town: https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/zahranici/jicinsky-masakr-je-hanbou-okupantu-polak-v-roce-1968-zavrazd/r~191b3b9e68a411e89b0fac1f6b220ee8/.

Afterwards, Soviet troops used the city’s Jesuit college as a base until 1991, and didn’t exactly care about its upkeep.

The city has a very nice website which makes me quite want to spent a weekend there next time the weather’s good: https://www.jicin.org/en/discover-jicin.