What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 16 March 2024.

In the latter part of the 12th century, a Romanesque church was built round these parts.

In the 1360s, the church was given a Gothic makeover (which was not so much a makeover as a virtual replacement of the entire building).

The church became known for being progressive, and a place for debate – one attendee of these debates, and then a preacher at the church, was Jan Hus (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/10/05/prague-1-day-169-husova/).

In 1406, Křišťan z Prachatic – a key supporter of Hus – became the church’s priest (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2023/02/26/prague-3-day-151-kristanova/). Křišťan would even visit Hus in Constance in 1415, despite the inevitable prison sentence that followed.

Radical Hussites – who Křišťan opposed – raided the church in 1419, led by Jan Želivský (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2022/11/19/prague-3-day-23-jana-zelivskeho/), and Křišťan fled into exile. The church would be reconsecrated in 1436, post-Hussite wars.

After the Battle of Bílá Hora, the church ended up in Catholic hands, and gained a monastery.

However, both would be closed down in 1786, and the church was turned into a factory (the pic is from 1933, when it was a warehouse for a paper company).

It’s been all kinds – a warehouse for merchants, a depository of the State Library of Czechoslovakia, apartments, and a nightclub: https://prazsky.denik.cz/zpravy_region/diskoteka-u-sv-michaela-konci-majitel-pamatky-se-rozhodl-pro-lepsi-vyuziti-20150.html.

I just had a very, very vague déjà vu of winding up here around 03:00 on a night out in… 2009? 2010? and wondering if I was so drunk that I was imagining that I was in a nightclub that looked like a church.

I’d completely forgotten about that until writing this thread.

Also, in the 1990s, the church hosted ‘St Michael’s Mystery’, a frankly terrifying-sounding ‘Las Vegas-style show which tried to bring tourists closer to the main moments of Czech history’.

I can’t find any footage of this, which is probably a good thing.

The former monastery building now hosts a Banksy exhibition.

And there are amazing photos of the interior of the church in 1991 – a year after a fire which may or may not have been intentional – here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Church_of_Saint_Michael_Archangel_in_Prague_1991.

Other buildings on Michalská include U Zlatého melounu (The Golden Melon), supposedly performed in Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Grieg in the 1860s.

In case you’re wondering what the flag is, the building now hosts the not-an-embassy-but-you-get-what-I-mean of Bavaria.

Meanwhile, U Zlatého půlkola – The Golden Semicircle – was once the home of the first Czech bookstore, and of the publishing house Česká expedice.

While number 11, U Tří tykví (The Three Gourdes), was where poet and folklorist Karel Jaromír Erben (he of Kytice fame) died in 1870.

Excellent decorations too.