What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 15 May 2024.

The oldest Jewish settlements in Prague were probably on Malá Strana and near Vyšehrad. The Vyšehrad one disappeared around the end of the 11th century.

The one in Malá Strana, meanwhile, was burned down in 1142, when Conrad III of Germany laid siege to Prague Castle. The Jewish population therefore crossed the river and settled in the Old Town.

However, we’re not sure if they moved to an existing Jewish settlement, or founded a new one. What we do know is that a synagogue was built here around the 12th century and was called the Altschul (the Old School).

Apparently, it was used by Jews of Byzantine origin, and was located at a slight distance to the Jewish town and its inhabitants, as the two groups didn’t quite see eye to eye.

The synagogue suffered greatly over the years – it was burnt down during the 1389 pogrom, as well as in 1516 and 1689. It also got closed down, as ordered by Leopold I, from 1693 to 1704.

It was also subject to huge mistreatment from 1745 to 1748 (Maria Theresa had ordered the Jews out of Prague in 1744), requiring reconstruction in 1750… only to get burnt down again in 1754.

It got reconstructed shortly after (this picture is from 1769), but, in 1867, was deemed not big enough to suit the community’s needs. It was demolished and replaced by the Spanish Synagogue.

Which I assume is so called because of its Moorish Revival style (which is giving me enjoyable memories of a summer spent doing Cádiz-Seville-Granada-Córdoba in 2011).

Like so many synagogues, this one fell into disrepair – although that happened relatively late, in the 1970s – and was revived in 1998, under the management of the Jewish Museum.

Of the six surviving synagogues in Josefov, this is the newest, and we’ve now covered all of them; there are eight further synagogues in Prague, of which only one is in the centre: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/09/18/prague-1-day-130-jeruzalemska/.

U staré školy also includes the Robert Guttmann Gallery, named after a Jewish painter of naïve art, who was born in Sušice (South Bohemia) in 1880 and died in the Łódź Ghetto in 1942.

Next door to that is the administrative museum of the Jewish Museum in Prague.