What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 31 October 2022.

Velehradská was built around 1860.

Until 1896, the street was called U židovského hřbitova (At the Jewish Cemetery), as, until 1890, what is now Mahlerovy sady (which includes the Žižkov Television Tower) hosted the cemetery until it was moved (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2022/11/28/prague-3-day-99-izraelska/) due to overcrowding.

Velehrad, meanwhile, is a village in the Uherské Hradiště District (Zlín Region), with a population of 1,100.

Early mentions of the village are quite confusing – the name appears in 1141, but actually relates to Staré Město, a town about 5 km from Actual Current Velehrad.

Vladislav Jindřich, Margrave of Moravia, built a Cistercian monastery in the area in 1205.

(In brief, Cistercians are Catholic monks known for their commitment to manual labour)

In the least surprising news of all time, the Moravian Hussites burned the monastery down in 1421. It was almost 200 years before it was restored.

A restoration which was followed by the monastery being ravaged by Transylvanian troops in 1623, then Wallachian ones in 1626.

Reconstructed in the 1700s, it was closed in 1784 as part of Joseph II’s reforms.

It was acquired by the Jesuits in 1890, although their activities there were terminated in 1950 as part of Akce K (the communists’ campaign against monasteries).

The Communists liquidated the monastery and send the Jesuits to ‘concentration monasteries’.

They returned in 1990; John Paul II paid a visit in the same year.

The most famous part of the monastery is the Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and Saints Cyril and Methodius / Bazilika Nanebevzetí Panny Marie a svatého Cyrila a Metoděje.

Consecrated in 1228, it’s been one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the country since the 19th century.

Every July – on the 6th and the 7th – the National Pilgrimage takes place here, commemorating the arrival of Cyril, Methodius and Christianity in the Czech Lands.

I was looking for footage of the 2022 pilgrimage, but came across some incredible colour footage from the 1940 pilgrimage instead. Sadly, it’s now disappeared from YouTube.

Velehrad has also given its name to a charity in London whose chief objective is ‘provision of relief, whether financial or otherwise, and assistance of needy migrants from former Czechoslovakia’: http://en.velehrad.org.uk/intro/