What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 24 May 2024.

Originally, the street was called Za masnými krámy, on which see yesterday: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/11/03/prague-1-day-235-masna/.

However, before the meat shops (probably – I can’t say for certain when those appeared), there was also the Church of St Benedict, built at some point between 1150 and 1175.

The Teutonic Knights – somehow not mentioned in any of these threads to date – moved in around the 1230s, took over the church, and also had their Old Town Command built nearby, probably simultaneously with the development of the Old Town fortifications.

The command only lasted about 200 years; the church underwent reconstruction around the same time that the command was abandoned, and became part of the Norbertinum, a seminary for Premonstratensian canons.

The church was destroyed in 1792, which is also when the street was renamed, as if that’s some sort of compensation for the loss of what might have been quite an attractive building (in an area of the Old Town which… could do with a few more).

This also explains why this post has a minimum of photographs to accompany it. If you want to know what the spot the church was located on looks like now, please enjoy this picture of the Kotva shopping centre.

Bonus St Benedict trivia: he’s the patron saint of so many things that I’m just going to do a copy-and-paste from Wikipedia here.