What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 28 November 2022.

U Kanálky was built in 1905. It was called Kanálská until 1961.

Kanálka is a garden that used to exist here, between Polská and Vinohradská, built by the Czech gardener Václav Teisinger.

Czech philanthrope and botanist Josef Emanuel Canal ordered its construction in the 1780s, after purchasing various homesteads and vineyards in the area.

His not terribly Czech name was Josef Emanuel Malabaila de Canal – with (C/K)anal giving the garden its name.

The garden was opened in 1800, and was initially open to the public free of charge, but ticketed access came later in a bid to avoid the garden getting damaged.

In line with Canal’s philanthropic tendencies, Kanálka included a botanical institute, greenhouses, a lecture hall and areas for breeding new or (then) relatively uncommon crops, including potatoes and alfalfa.

Less philanthropically, Jews were not allowed to enter.

There was also a farmyard, demonstrations of agricultural machinery and a zoo containing exotic birds and a fish pond. And a monkey.

In 1811, an ‘experimental sugar factory’ was added.

The most famous visitor to the garden was Mozart.

Canal died in 1826; the garden was inherited by his daughter Josefína. It then passed through various owners, including one Moritz Zdekauer, who tried to rename the garden as Zdekauerova zahrada. The locals did not comply.

Here’s a postcard of an industrial exhibition in the garden in 1869.

And there are two colourful paintings of the garden on https://www.ctidoma.cz/zajimavosti/2019-05-09-zapomenuta-kanalka-bohata-zahrada-jako-z-pohadky-byla-dilem-italskeho-hrabete.

Kanálka was closed in 1884 and divided into building plots. Part of the garden is now Riegrovy sady.

One memento of Kanálka within Riegrák is the Ptačí obelisk / Bird Obelisk, a structure built in 1840 and reconstructed in 2009: https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?source=base&id=2318119&gallery=1&x=14.4417274&y=50.0815120&z=17

There’s also still a feeding pond for birds and a building that used to be part of a lookout tower.