What's in a Prague street name
Every street in Prague, one by one.
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I could talk about myself for ages, or I could point out that https://english.radio.cz/ed-ley-englishman-recording-stories-pragues-streets-one-one-8806941 is over two years old but still largely stands (other than the Twitter links).
Category: 1962
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Halasova was built in 1962. František Halas was born in Brno-Husovice in 1901. His parents were textile workers; his father had been imprisoned for his communist beliefs, and his mother died in 1908. These experiences would greatly influence his career as a poet. When WW1 started, Halas’s father was called up to the front, where…
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Tilschové was built in 1962. Anna Maria Tilschová was born in Prague in 1873. Her father was a doctor of law; her mother was the daughter of Ferdinand Urbánek (1812-87), a sugar entrepreneur and organiser of cultural life in Bohemia and Moravia. In 1895, Anna Maria married her cousin, Emanuel Tilsch, also a lawyer; they…
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Blažíčkova was built in 1962. They were busy round here in 1962. Oldřich Blažíček was born in Slavkovice in 1887. Along with his brother, he trained as a house painter, and then moved to Prague to develop his career. Eventually, he got a place at the School of Applied Arts (UPŠ), eventually transferring to and…
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Kremličkova was built in 1962. Rudolf Kremlička was born in Kolín in 1886, and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Interested in impressionism, he became all the more so after visiting Paris, and the painter Édouard Manet became his role model. He became one of the leading members of Tvrdošíjní (‘The Stubborn…
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Fillova was built in 1962. Emil Filla was born in Chropyně, near Kroměříž, in 1882, and grew up in Brno. After graduating, he got a job as a clerk at an insurance company, but soon decided office life wasn’t for him and headed for Prague. He started studying monumental painting at the Academy of Fine…
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Rabasova was built in 1962. Václav Rabas was born in Krušovice (near Rakovník, and as in the beer) in 1885. After completing his military service, he started studying at Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts. This all went well enough until 1909, when a critical article he wrote about the Academy was published. Rabas’s studies were…
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Poláčkova was built in 1962. Karel Poláček was born in Rychnov nad Kněžnou in 1892; his father was a Jewish merchant. He also went to school there, but was expelled from grammar school for behaving badly and getting poor grades. Eventually, he ended up finishing his schooling on Truhlářská (AKA one of the streets that…
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Olbrachtova was built in 1962. Welcome to the Krč era! Karel Zeman (bear with me) was born in Semily, near Liberec, in 1882. His father, Antonín, was a lawyer who also wrote novels under the name of Antal Stašek (this will be relevant in a future post). Even while studying at the gymasium in Dvůr…
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Kaplická was built in 1962. Kaplice is a town in South Bohemia, 20 kilometres southeast of Český Krumlov. It’s named after the Chapel of St Mary, although that no longer exists. The earliest written mention dates from 1257, when Pope Alexander IV gave a church in the town permission to sell indulgences. In 1382, Kaplice…
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Pujmanové was built in 1962. Marie Hennerová was born in Prague’s New Town in 1893. Her father, Kamil Henner, was a professor at the Law Faculty of Charles University, while her brother, Kamil, later became a renowned neurologist. Moving to České Budějovice in 1912, she married Vlastislav Zátka, a lawyer; the marriage was short-lived, and…
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Milevská was built in 1962. Milevsko is a town of 8,000 people in South Bohemia, located 22 kilometres from both Písek (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2023/03/19/prague-3-day-175-pisecka/) and Tábor (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2025/02/06/prague-4-day-26-taborska/). The earliest written mention of it is from 1184, which is three years before Jiřího z Milevska, a nobleman, arranged for a monastery to be built in the vicinity. As…
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Originally published on Twitter on 11 June 2022. Buková was built in 1962. We’re still on the trees, and a buk is a beech (Fagus). In Central Europe, the beech is the main feature of deciduous forests. In the Czech Republic, the tree has also given its name to a village of 303 people in…
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Originally published on Twitter on 2 June 2022. K Chmelnici was built in 1962. A chmelnice is a ‘hop garden’ (as in ‘beer’, not ‘skip and jump’, because Czech Republic). Chmel is the common hop, or humulus lupulus. Hop gardens are quite expensive to maintain, as hops are a climbing plant, so they need to…
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Originally published on Twitter on 5 May 2022. Pod Krejcárkem was built in 1962, and translates as ‘Under Krejcárek’. Krejcárek was an emergency colony (i.e. a residential area, akin to a shanty town, built to deal with a large influx of workers moving to Prague). It was established as a garden centre in 1922 (when…
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Originally published on Twitter on 27 April 2022, when I’d just tested positive for COVID. This may get mentioned a couple of times. ‘Na vrcholu’, built in 1962, means ‘at the top’. You would think this was the top of something quite momentous. But it seems it’s just at the top of Koněvova. This isn’t…
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Originally posted on Twitter on 26 April 2022. K Lučinám was built in 1962. Like ‘luka’, a ‘lučina’ is a meadow, but the word is archaic enough to not even appear on Seznam Slovník. But it does appear in the Czech national anthem: ‘voda hučí po lučinách’ (water streams across the meadows), otherwise knows as…
What's in a Prague street name 