What's in a Prague street name

Pod Klaudiánkou was built in 1925.

A pleasingly short one today, as I can just point you in the direction of https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2025/06/14/prague-4-day-117-na-klaudiance/.

So, let’s take advantage of that and tell another story, that of the ‘číslo popisné’, literally ‘descriptive number’, AKA the unique number assigned to each building in Prague in addition to its street-specific number.

‘Conscription numbers’, AKA Konskriptionsnummer, or orientation numbers, first became a thing during the reign of Maria Theresa (you may not be surprised to know that the Hofsburg in Vienna was numbered as ‘1’). Numbers were usually assigned based on when the houses had been built.

There were so many changes in the system that, a hundred years later, some buildings were already on their fifth number. One effect of these multiple changes is that the word Hausnummer can be used to mean a ‘ballpark figure’.

In Vienna, a ruling in 1894 declared that ‘as we know them’ number had to be shown on the front of each building, whereas the orientation number had to be recorded somewhere inside the house that was accessible to all residents. This was repealed in 2001.

The Viennese never quite got round to thinking the orientation numbers were something that mattered; the Czechs and Slovaks clearly disagreed, as the system is still in place today.

I decided to crowbar this into today’s post because the highest possible číslo popisné is 9999, and Pod Klaudiánkou gets quite close to that with a 9995.