What's in a Prague street name

Novohrádecká was built in 1935.

In 1411, King Václav IV (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/10/10/prague-1-day-183-kralodvorska/) ordered the construction of a castle here in Kunratice Forest.

It must have been constructed pretty quickly, especially by 21st-century Prague standards, as there’s a record of his staying there in 1412.

But it also seems he liked it so much there that he gladly stayed there when it wasn’t even finished yet. I stayed in a mid-construction hotel in Romania in 1999 for almost three weeks and had absolutely no complaints, so no judgement from my side.

Drawing from https://www.krcakzije.cz/lokalita/uplynulo-600-let-od-smrti-vaclava-iv-v-krcaku.html.

Václav wanted to copy what his dad had done at Karlštejn (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/10/15/prague-1-day-196-karlova/), and name the castle Wenzelstein, but this didn’t catch on, and it became known as ‘Nový hrad’ (‘New Castle’).

Side note that I went to Newcastle-upon-Tyne in summer 2025 and thought it was wonderful.

Václav was at Nový Hrad in the summer of 1419 when he heard that two councillors had been defenstrated in Prague’s New Town (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/09/01/prague-2-day-164-karlovo-namesti/) on 30 July.

He reacted with rage; his body reacted with a stroke, and he died at the castle on 16 August (the medical cause is not agreed on).

The castle didn’t survive much longer than Václav did – the people of Prague besieged it in December 1420, and burned it down in January 1421.

While various buildings destroyed in the Hussite Wars (and in later acts or disasters) were rebuilt, nobody ever seemed that bothered to do so to Nový Hrad.

There was a good deal of excavation of the surviving castle ruins in 2012-3, and they’re accessible to the public. The former castle is also part of the scene for the Velká kunratická cross-country race, and apparently the most challenging section.