What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 19 September 2023.

In 1572, the Ursuline religious order, or the Company of Saint Ursula (Czech: Řádu svaté Voršily) was founded in Italy.

The order gradually spread around Europe, with seven nuns from Liège arriving in Prague in 1655 and, in 1664, setting up a convent in the New Town. In the 1720s, they relocated to Hradčanské náměstí (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/09/07/prague-1-day-13-hradcanske-namesti/).

However, in the 1780s, Joseph II, who considered most monasteries and convents to be unproductive, had over 700 such institutions closed down across the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1784, this was one of them.

Joseph considered that the building would be more useful if it were used to store military equipment – hence the street name. It had previously been known as Uršulinská or Voršilská (see above).

The building would be used as barracks until 1945, after which it wasn’t used for anything at all until major reconstruction in the 1990s.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but please take a minute to freak out about how one of the narrowest streets you can imagine used to have a tram running along it: https://www.blesk.cz/clanek/regiony-praha-praha-volny-cas/447110/vazna-nehoda-tramvaji-na-hradcanech-stala-se-pred-vice-nez-100-lety.html