What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 27 September 2023.

In 1143, Vladislav II, the second King of Bohemia, founded a monastery. I don’t want to say huge amounts about that right now, because it’ll leave me with nothing to say tomorrow.

Originally known as Sion (i.e. Zion), its name had changed to Strahov within a few years. ‘Strahov’ may be derived from the verb strážit, ‘to guard’ (střežit in modern Czech, strážiť in Slovak).

Eventually, it became the name of the entire district. However, only part of it is in Prague 1; if you’re lucky enough to live in one of the villas round here, you may well be in Prague 5: https://www.idnes.cz/bydleni/na-navsteve/smichov-praha-opustene-domy-hotel-strahov-stadion-vanicek-prazdne-domy-bezdomovci-ruiny-soud.A190226_135834_dum_osobnosti_web

Whereas, if you were lucky enough to be one of the 110,000-odd people at this gig on 18 August 1990, you were in Prague 6:

Strahovská itself connects the monastery with Petřín. Make it all the way to the end, and you’ll reach Štefánikova hvězdárna / Štefánik’s Observatory, built in 1928 and named after Slovak astronomer Milan Rastislav Štefánik.

These would be better pictures if there hadn’t been quite so much reconstruction work taking place when I was there.

You can also escape down the hill without having to use your feet very much.

Also worth mentioning are the ‘Strahov events’ of 1967.

On 31 October, students living in the local dormitories had had enough of the constant power cuts, and 2,000 took to the streets, shouting ‘Chceme světlo, chceme více světla’ (We want light, we want more light).

The security forces reacted with aggression, beating protesters, some of them so badly that they became unable to continue their studies.

Mladá Fronta reported on the event – obviously, the students didn’t get a good write-up, but nor did those who beat them up. Public awareness of this would be one of the factors that contributed to the Prague Spring a few months later.

Here’s a 2002 piece on the events from Czech Television: https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/1091682868-osudove-okamziky/403235100081006/

And a pretty incredible piece on the events from a year on (great footage of many of the streets covered recently here, too): https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/1130615451-ceskoslovensky-filmovy-tydenik/218562262700006/