What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 8 January 2024.

Prague’s New Town was founded in 1348; of its early citizens, we know that there was one called Jakub Charvát.

We can also assume he was quite well-off, because, in 1378, he bought two houses (now at numbers 33 and 34 on this street), as well as the surrounding Olbramovice gardens.

He replaced the garden with eighteen new houses which he rented out, making him a precursor of those nightmare landlords in big cities who people love exposing on Facebook.

He owned so much property in this area that it came to be known as Charváty, and the street name was in place by around 1400 too.

Maps from the 19th century refer to the street as Židovská zahrada zadní (Rear Jewish Garden). I was going to discuss this in tomorrow’s post, but that is a long one and this one isn’t particularly, so here goes.

This was a Jewish cemetery, used for burials from 1254 (at the latest) until 1478, when the area was transformed into building plots.

From 1900 to 1920, construction works round here unearthed several Jewish tombstones from that time; fragments are in the National Museum.

Further construction work in 1997 resulted in the discovery of another 400 tombs and skeletal graves; the works were terminated as Judaism states that graves are inviolable for eternity. The subterranean area was declared a cultural monument. More on https://www.jewishgen.org/austriaczech/archaeol.htm.

A memorial, created by Richard Sidej and put in place in 2016, commemorates the cemetery.