What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 22 May 2024.

‘Kolkovné’ is stamp tax or stamp duty; I would explain in detail what that is, but it’s been fifteen years since my tax exams, and stamp duty was one of the chapters that I don’t think I fully understood at the time.

We believe stamp duty originated in Venice in 1604, and, while we now associate it with property purchases, it also used to be payable on most legal documents, including cheques, receipts and marriage licences.

And, at number 1 on this street, the Stará kolkovna was the stamp duty office.

It’s not there anymore – it was destroyed in the ‘asanace’ in 1904 – and its replacement now makes me understand how all the Kolkovna restaurants across Prague got their name.

The destruction becomes all the more disheartening when you learn that Václav IV apparently had this building as his main non-Prague-Castle residence in the city.

Thanks to a Norwegian grant, you can see this publication about the attempts to rescue the building here: https://www.digitalniknihovna.cz/mlp/view/uuid:da31fbd0-1df7-11de-b478-0030487be43a?page=uuid:95721470-1df8-11de-8762-0030487be43a.

If you’re not into Czech food, you can walk to the other side of the road and have a chat with Jimmy Dean (maybe about how those upper floors need a bit of love).