What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 20 March 2024.

For the name, we can go back 48 hours and learn about St Gall and a town-within-a town: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/10/08/prague-1-day-175-havelska/.

Until the 1700s, Havelská ulička was nameless, and was part of the surrounding market. There was also quite a gap between people using the current name and its becoming official (that happened in 1906).

There’s one building on either wide of the street, and they’re joined by a walkway (shoutout to https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/09/23/prague-1-day-138-nekazanka/). It dates from 1931.

One of these buildings is the former Carmelite monastery. The other – the Municipal Savings Bank – was built in Neo-Renaissance style between 1892 and 1894 by, like so much other great buildings in Prague, Antonín Wiehl and Osvald Polívka.

From 1954 to 1989, the building hosted the Klement Gottwald Museum, presumably a worse place to take your child, or anyone, than that Willy Wonka Experience thing that was half of my feed a few weeks back.

If you’re not watching this and thinking ‘1979? Seriously?’ every three seconds, we need to have a word.