Originally published on X on 25 September 2023. The southern, Prague 1 side doesn’t have a street sign.
Jan Dlabač was born in Cerhenice, near Kolín, in 1758. In 1771, he became a choirboy at Břevnov Monastery, then becoming head chorister at Strahov Monastery four years later.
After studying philosophy, mathematics and physics at Prague University, he joined the order of the Premonstratensians and adopted the name Bohumír.
He was ordained in 1785, and would spend the rest of his life living at Strahov, where, from 1786, he was also in charge of the library.
In 1780, Emperor Joseph II had issued the Edict on Idle Institutions, which outlawed monasteries which weren’t dealing with teaching, nursing or other practical work.
This would lead to multiple closures of monasteries in Bohemia and Moravia; Dlabač visited these institutions and collected drawings, musical works and other written articles.
By 1815, he’d collected enough materials to produce three volumes of the Allgemeine historisches Künstler-Lexikon für Böhmen und zum Theile auch für Mähren und Schlesien (General historical artist encyclopedia for Bohemia and partly also for Moravia and Silesia).
Dlabač died in 1820, aged 61; the manuscript of his lexicon – which remains a useful source for learning about Czech cultural life at the time – is still to be found at Strahov.
In ‘I’d never thought about name X being name Y, but now it’s incredibly obvious’ news, Bohumír, in German, is Gottfried.
In 1091, Kosmas’s Chronicle referred to a market settlement here. However, it was destroyed in a fire a few years later, and, when the market was rebuilt, it was placed on the other side of the Vltava.
Pohořelec – a name used for the area since the 1300s – derives from the verb hořet, to burn. In modern-day Czech, pohořet can be translated as ‘fail’, ‘come unstuck’ or ‘come a cropper’.
True to its name, Pohořelec would also get burned down by the Hussites in the 1420s, and again in 1541, when a huge fire engulfed Malá Strana and Hradčany.
The most spectacular building on Poheřelec is probably the former barracks, built in Neo-Renaissance style and owned by the Ministry of Defence, but currently out of use.
Kučerův palác / Kučera Palace, at number 22, was restored to its original Baroque appearance in the 1990s. It’s now the office address of the clothing company Vermont (you may have been to one of their GANT stores).
Šlikův palác / Šlik Palace, at number 25, was the city orphanage from 1875 to 1913. It had also been the birthplace of the founder of the ČSSD, Josef Boleslav Pecka-Strahovský, in 1849.
No longer around is the house which Tycho Brahe lived in from 1599 to 1601, and used as an observatory (given some of the views from round here, a good choice).
Ditto a statue to Josef Jiří Švec, who fought in the Battle of Zborov / Zboriv as part of the Czechoslovak Legion in 1917.
Raoul Wallenberg was born on Lidingö, an island in the Stockholm Archipelago, in 1912. His father had died of cancer three months earlier.
His grandfather was, at this time, Swedish Ambassador to Japan, and made it his mission to show Raoul the world.
Wallenberg studied in Paris, and then studied achitecture at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, graduating in 1935. After this, his grandfather sent him to work in South Africa, then in Haifa.
In Haifa, he met Jews who had fled from Nazi Germany. Wallenberg, one-sixteenth Jewish through his mother’s family, became hugely interested in their plight.
In 1941, Raoul’s cousin and godfather, Jacob, arranged a job for him at Melaneuropeiska Handelsaktiebolaget (The Central European Trading Joint Stock Company), which dealt in trade in food between Sweden and Hungary.
Raoul would visit Hungary on both 1942 and 1943, at a time when the country was highly discriminatory towards its Jewish population, but had, so far, refused to send them to the concentration camps.
Wallenberg’s boss, Kálmán Lauer, was a Hungarian Jew, and felt increasingly unable to visit his native land – hence Raoul becoming his representative.
Hitler ordered the occupation of Hungary in March 1944, and a puppet state was set up. Mass deportation of Hungarian Jews to concentration camps in Poland would commence within weeks.
The US government’s War Refugee Board (WRB) expressed its desire to send somebody from neutral Sweden to help to rescue the Jews. At the same time, the Swedish legation in Budapest was finding itself overloaded with requests for protection.
In June 1944, Sweden’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave permission for Wallenberg to join the country’s legation in Budapest, financed by the WRB. Arriving in July, Wallenberg developed his plan to issue protection documents in order to save as many Jews as possible.
Negotiations led to the bearers of such passports being regarded by the authorities as Swedish citizens – thereby saving them from deportation.
Wallenberg also rented multiple buildings in Budapest and declared them to be protected by diplomatic immunity; almost 10,000 people would be housed in them.
The Soviet Army launched an offensive against Budapest in October 1944. On 17 January 1945, Wallenberg, accused of espionage on behalf of the US, was called to their headquarters in Debrecen.
Promptly transferred to the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, there would be no news of him until 1957, when the Soviet authorities announced that he had died of an infection a decade earlier, when he was 34.
However, even as late as the 1980s, there were prisoners in Siberian gulags who claimed to have seen a man fitting his description.
In Budapest, there’s a memorial park named after him just behind the Dohány Street Synagogue, one of Budapest’s most-visited landmarks, located on what was the border of the Budapest Ghetto.
An úvoz is a ‘sunken lane’ or a ‘hollow way’. The longer name for one of these is an úvozová cesta.
‘One of those’ being a road which cuts into the terrain, and is therefore a good bit lower than the land on either side of it.
Those of us from the UK may know such roads from the North and South Downs, or the West Country. They’re also fairly frequent in the west of France.
Originally, Úvoz was called Strahovská cesta (we’re getting to Strahov), and then, until 1870, it was known as ‘Hluboká cesta’ (Deep Road), for the same reasons as described above.
Úvoz is the home of the Embassy of Sweden. More on Sweden and a particular Swede in one of this weekend’s posts.
In Czech, a town hall is called a radnice, because a council (rada) would meet there (see also: the German Rathaus).
The adjective from radnice is radnický, and schody are ‘steps’.
127 of these run directly south-east of the former town hall, hence their being given this name in 1870.
Online sources say that there are two statues at the foot of the stairs. I can vouch for the first one of these, which is of Jan Nepomucký with two angels at his feet.
But the other statue – of St Joseph and the baby Jesus – seemed to be off enjoying the unseasonally hot weather when I passed by.
But this is Hradčany, so we can happily move on to talking about beautiful buildings instead.
Number 1 is Hradčany Town Hall, built around 1600. It fulfilled this role until 1784, when the four historical districts of Prague were merged into one. It’s way smaller than you’d expect a town hall to be, but also an excellent piece of Renaissance architecture.
Trauttmansdorff Palace, at number 6, is named after a noble Austrian family.
It’s served as a set of up-market apartments, a ‘Donucovací pracovna’ (literally ‘forced labour’ – an educational facility aimed at forcing people to get into regular work, a prison building, and, nowadays, as part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Masaryk’s daughter, the renowned sociologist Alice Masaryková (1879-1966), would live a few doors up on two occasions, as did Marcia Davenport (1903-96), an American writer best known for her biography of Mozart.
However, in the 1780s, Joseph II, who considered most monasteries and convents to be unproductive, had over 700 such institutions closed down across the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1784, this was one of them.
Joseph considered that the building would be more useful if it were used to store military equipment – hence the street name. It had previously been known as Uršulinská or Voršilská (see above).
The building would be used as barracks until 1945, after which it wasn’t used for anything at all until major reconstruction in the 1990s.
Nový Svět was originally a village, developing outside Hradčany in the early 1300s, and, in 1360, being attached to it as ordered by Charles IV. Not surprisingly, many of its residents worked at the Castle.
And its attachment to Hradčany is why it became known as a ‘new world’ from 1360 on.
It burnt down twice (once during the Hussite Wars, and once during the 1541 fire that devastated this side of the Vltava). After the latter, the street started to take its current form.
Nový Svět also does pretty well in the ‘[…] lived here!’ stakes, as we’ll see below.
It was also the birthplace of Jaroslav Drobný (1921-2001), who won Wimbledon in 1954 (representing Egypt).
Number 2, U zlaté hvězdy (The Golden Star) was lived in by director Karel Kachyňa (1924-2004), most famous for 1970’s Ucho (The Ear), not released until 1989 due to its criticism of the Communist regime.
Number 4, U zlatého žaludu (The Golden Acorn) was lived in by Rudolf Friml (1879-1972), best known for moving to the US and composing the operettas Rose-Marie and The Vagabond King.
Number 10, U raka, named after the nearby stream’s considerable crab population, was inhabited by renowned author Arnošt Lustig (1926-2011) and the writer and journalist Ota Pavel (1930-73). Both are buried in Žižkov’s New Jewish Cemetery (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2022/11/28/prague-3-day-99-izraelska/).
Number 19, U Zlatého beránka (The Golden Lamb), used to be the workshop of performance artist, sculptor and dissident Milan Knížák, who was also the director of the Czech National Gallery from 1999 to 2011: https://www.milanknizak.com/.
Number 96/6 was lived in and used as a workshop by modernist painter Jan Zrzavý (1890-1977).
Johannes Kepler was born Weil der Stadt, the “Gateway to the Black Forest”, in 1571, and was the son of a mercenary and a herbalist.
Observing the Great Comet of 1577, and a lunar eclipse in 1580, he soon became fascinated by astronomy.
The picture below is Jiří Jakubův Dačický’s engraving of the comet, as seen over Prague.
While at university in Tübingen, he became a committed Copernican (i.e. he agreed that the planets don’t revolve around the Earth), and also became extremely adept at astrology and horoscopes.
Before his studies were complete, he moved to Graz in 1594 to become a teacher of mathematics. It was here that he met his wife, Barbara Müller, whom he married in 1597.
In 1600, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (street in Prague 6, BTW) persuaded Kepler to visit him in Prague and become his assistant. Brahe (great astronomer, not great at maths) was complemented by Kepler (amazing at maths, too short-sighted to observe the stars well).
However, the collaboration would be short-lived, as Brahe died a few days after attending a banquet in Prague in 1601 (either of a urinary problem or mercury poisoning). Rudolph II appointed Kepler to replace Brahe as the imperial mathematician.
Kepler would give Rudolph both astrological and political advice. In return, he was promised what was meant to be a good income, but the imperial treasury was such a mess that what he really got was long periods without being paid and an angry wife.
In 1604, Kepler saw a previously undiscovered supernova, which put paid to the ancient theory that the heavens were unchangeable. Only visible for three weeks, no supernova in the Milky Way has been observable to the naked eye since. It’s known as Kepler’s Supernova.
During the first decade of the 1600s, Kepler also determined the true orbit of the planets for the first time.
In 1611, Rudolph was forced to abdicate by his brother Matthias. Things got pretty grim for Kepler – Matthias was less supportive than Rudolph, Kepler’s research was compromised by religious tensions (he was a Lutheran), and then his son and wife died in quick succession.
He left Prague in 1612 and settled in Linz, working as a teacher and as an expert in astrology and astronomy. In 1613, he remarried, to Susanna Reuttinger.
In 1630, Kepler travelled to Regensburg for work purposes. He became ill, though, and died there a month later. His grave, and the churchyard it belonged to, were destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War. This is a sketch of his tombstone.
A secondary school named after Kepler exists in Prague 6; there’s also a statue of him and Brahe in Keplerova itself.
There are also craters bearing his name on the Moon and Mars, an asteroid, the main university in Linz, and… Kep1er, a K-pop girl group formed through a reality TV show called Girls Planet 999 in 2021.
Hopefully a rival band called Br3he or similar will appear in the next season. (I’m kidding. I think.)
From the 1700s, this was known as Nový Svět (New World), as were current-day Nový Svět and Kapucínská (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/09/07/prague-1-day-16-kapucinska/). It then became Zadní (Lower) Nový Svět in the early 1800s, later being treated as part of Kapucínská before gaining its current name in 1870.
Humprecht Jan Černín was born in Radenín (near Tábor) in 1628, into the Nedrahovice branch of the noble Černín family.
Being a noble had benefits – his studies with the Jesuits meant he got to spend time in Florence, Rome, Paris and Brussels, and, in 1651, he inherited six estates from his late uncle.
Černín served as chamberlain to Archduke Leopold Habsburg (the future Leopold I) from 1650, later becoming a viceroy of the Kingdom of Bohemia, an imperial envoy in Venice, and, in 1675, a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the highest Habsburg honour.
His wealth and travels led him to become a collector of art, with a particular interest in Old Testament scenes, Greek mythology and depictions of modern literature. In the 1660s, he moved back to Prague (with his collection), and commissioned a palace to be built.
While good progress was made on the construction, Černín died at Kosmonosy in 1682, and therefore never saw it in its completed state.
Černín Palace was badly damaged both during the Wars of the Austrian Succession (1740s) and the Battle of Prague during the Seven Years’ War (1757).
It was given a Baroque reconstruction, and, from the 1770s, played various roles (as barracks, as an art gallery, as a homeless shelter and as an infirmary, among others).
In 1934 – following reconstruction by the architect Pavel Janák – it became the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Czechoslovakia. It still serves the same purpose for the Czech Republic today.
During the Nazi occupation, it was the office of the Reichsprotektor.
Let’s start this one in Italy, where Loreto, on the Adriatic coast, and with a population of about 12,000, houses the Basilica della Santa Casa, which some Catholics believe was inhabited by the Virgin Mary.
Rather than being a nice Italian holiday home for the… Mary and Joseph didn’t have surnames, did they, medieval traditions suggested that the house was originally located in Nazareth.
After Jesus’s Ascension, it was turned into a church, which, in 1291, was reputedly carried to Dalmatia by angels in order to stop it from being attacked by Muslim soldiers.
The legend then has it that the church was carried, again by angels, to Loreto in 1294. Whether this was done to get it away from hordes of Czech tourists remains unknown.
Inevitably, Loreto is therefore a popular pilgrimage site – Italy’s second most popular after Rome – and a building seen as worth emulating elsewhere, for example in Prague.
In 1626, construction started, led by Italian architect Giovanni Orsi, and financed by one Countess Benigna Kateřina z Lobkowicz, who had bought many properties in Hradčany after these had been confiscated post-Bílá Hora.
The chapel was consecrated in 1631; Benigna died in 1654 and would be buried here – there’s a crypt for the Lobkowicz family.
‘Loreta’ is also the name given to the whole range of Baroque buildings on the square: https://loreta.cz/en.
The main façade of the complex is pretty spectacular and contains a *lot* of saints and angels (possibly taking a break from transporting entire buildings from Croatia).
The Loreta also hosts Europe’s biggest church carillon, first rung in 1695 (30 bells, of which 27 play, and three apparently are just there to look nice).
During the day, they currently play Maria, Maria, nad slunce jasnější every hour, having played another song for a century until this was changed in 2020.
The square is also home to this 2005 statue of Edvard Beneš (by Karel Dvořák), conveniently close to his beloved (?) Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The square also includes the building where, in 1957, SAPO, the first programmable computer in Czechoslovakia, was made. The house (U Pešků) was the location of the Research Institute of Mathematical Machines.
Finally, if you want to get a drink, pretend it’s not this decade, *and* support a good cause, U Černého vola (The Black Ox) was opened in 1965, and proceeds from sales go to Jaroslav Ježek’s (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2023/01/14/prague-3-day-136-jezkova/) nearby school for the blind.
At least 52 further Loretas were built in Bohemia and Moravia, though many haven’t survived (including one in Prague’s New Town on Jungmannovo).
The Ordo Fratrum Minorum Capuccinorum / Order of Friars Minor Capuchin was founded in 1525, when a friar called Matteo Serafini decided that friars should go back to behaving in a way which their founder, St Francis of Assisi, would’ve approved of.
Persecuted for this, they were granted refuge by the Camaldolese Hermits of Mount Corona, who wore a hood that the new order would also adopt.
The ‘hood’ can also be called a chaperon, or, in Italian, a cappuccio. The friars also wore (and still do wear) brown habits.
And that’s why the cappuccino you might be drinking as you read this is called what it’s called.
Around the year 1600, Saint Lawrence of Brindisi founded a monastery here. Gradually built up over the next 150 years, it got badly damaged in 1757 by Prussian artillery.
Its most famous part is the Kostel Panny Marie Andělské / Church of Our Lady of Angels.
The monastery wasn’t utilised for the best of purposes in the 20th century – the Nazis used it as a prison, and, from the 1950s, it was the site of communist counterintelligence operations.
However, after the Velvet Revolution, it returned to its original purpose. It also administers the nearby Loreta.
Capuchins are currently archbishops of Boston (Seán Patrick O’Malley) and Reykjávik (Dávid Bartimej Tencer). With the latter being from that well-known Icelandic stronghold, Slovakia.
Meanwhile, if that wasn’t enough of an unexpected turn for you, here’s Father Cesare Bonizzi giving it his all (about fifty seconds in):
He stopped performing in 2009 and says it’s all the devil’s fault.
A kanovník – or, alternatively, a kapitulár – is a canon, i.e. a clergyman who belongs to a specific chapter, or who performs liturgical functions in a certain church.
The ‘certain church’ in this case is quite an important one – St. Vitus Cathedral (as it was known until 1997, when Wenceslas/Václav and Adalbert/Vojtěch found their way into its name).
*allows self quick photo dump despite the cathedral not being in this street*
From 1911 to 1938, a tram line ran along this street. Anybody who’s walked along it, even when it’s empty, will sense that this was maybe not the best location for one. As kind of proven when three trams collided here in 1913.
https://www.prazsketramvaje.cz/view.php?cisloclanku=2020021001 has some brilliant photos, including one of the aftermath of the accident, and also one showing how much space a modern tram would have going along this route (spoiler: basically none).
This colourful building on the street is Palác Hložků ze Žampachu, a single-storey Baroque palace which is now lived in by the Austrian ambassador.
So this should be a brief one: ‘Ke Hradu’ means ‘Towards the Castle’, which is exactly where this street leads (depending which direction you’re going in, obvs).
One achievement of the street was to make the Royal Route, i.e. the journey that kings had to travel on the way to their coronation, from their court in the Old Town to the Castle, a little bit shorter.
Úvoz and Pohořelec, part of the Royal Route ever since it was first travelled in 1438, could now be bypassed.
It also has a Starbucks with about eight billion stairs before you reach the toilets, and if you want to judge me for getting a coffee there (not in the toilets), you try taking pics for this series for six hours on a day when there’s a torrential rainstorm every ten minutes.
But what’s outside the Starbucks is actually pretty interesting: sloup Panny Marie Einsiedelnské, or the column of Our Lady of Einsiedeln.
It includes a statue of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus in her lap. We know roughly when it was created (1672), but we don’t know by whom.
The Starbucks used to be the site of a chapel, also dedicated to Our Lady of Einsiedeln, and closed down in 1783 because, yes, Joseph II and his reforms.
In the 1230s, Prague’s Old Town became a municipality. In the 1250s, the Lesser Town, better known as Malá Strana, would follow.
Meanwhile, the area to the west of Prague Castle remained forested, with a road leading to Strahov, and then to Břevnov. This would change in 1320, when Hynek Berka z Dubé, a knight, founded Hradčany.
In the same way that Afričan, Američan and Angličan give you a clear idea of where someone comes from, a Hradčan was someone who ‘belonged’ to Prague Castle.
As with so much, Hradčany underwent a lot of development under Charles IV, who would come to power in 1346.
It wouldn’t be until 1746, however, that Maria Theresa made Hradčany the fourth municipality of Prague (after the Old Town, New Town and Malá Strana); in 1784, Joseph II would merge all four into a single entity.
And to not get invited in by one of the dissatisfying ones:
It’s a good spot for a speech, too:
There’s a heck of a lot on Hradčanské náměstí other than the castle, so let’s take a look at that, while not forgetting, of course, to admire the castle itself, and the Matthias Gate, the oldest piece of secular Baroque architecture in Prague.
Salmovský palác (1800-11), which is currently owned by the National Gallery, was used, at different times, as an administrative building for the church, posh living space for faithful communists, and the Swiss Embassy.
Nearby, there’s a statue of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, unveiled in 2000. There are also posters of him which you will not enjoy at all if you’re somebody who doesn’t like being told what (not) to do.
Schwarzenberský palác / Lobkovický palác (1545-67), owned by various very rich people for centuries, now hosts a permanent exhibition of the National Gallery and the Imperial Armory, a permanent exhibition of the Military Historical Institute.
Klášter bosých karmelitánů / Convent of the Discalced Carmelites contains St Benedict’s, once the parish church of Hradčany. The nuns moved elsewhere in 2020, largely because of the noise; it’s now a spiritual centre, Fortna: https://fortna.eu.
Toskánský palác (the Tuscan Palace) / Thun-Hohenštejnský palác, mainly built in the 1700s, is used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Martinický palác contained apartments for rent until 1967; after reconstruction, it was then the seat of the Office of the Chief Architect of the Capital City of Prague from 1974 to 1994. And can now be hired for weddings.
Sasko-Lauenburský palác is actually two Renaissance houses connected in 1552; the most famous resident of either house was probably Peter Parler, creator of St Vitus’ Cathedral and Charles Bridge. He died in Prague in 1399.
Losenovský palác / U Labutí is another case of two Renaissance houses being joined together; it was once lived in by a diplomat called Josef Korbel, and, therefore, by his daughter, one Madeleine Albright.
Arcibiskupský palác / The Archbishop’s Palace is lived in by… yeah, you’ve guessed.
Also lived in by men of a religious background were the Kanovnické domy / Canon houses, although most were destroyed in the Malá Strana fire of 1541.
The Mariánský morový sloup / Marian Plague Column, including Saints Vitus, Wenceslas and Adalbert, completed in 1736, commemorates where religious services were held during the Great Plague of 1713/4.
And then there are statues of St Wenceslas (commonly known as ‘Rybář’ / ‘The Fisherman’ because of his banner, and of one St. Filip Nerejský, largely of interest because we can’t quite agree who created it.
There’s also this lamppost, which is probably a bit nicer than the one nearest to your home.
Brusnice is a stream which has three sources, all in the vicinity of Břevnov Monastery. The most important one, Vojtěška, is named after St Vojtěch (or Adalbert of Prague), the country’s patron saint.
Legend has it that this was the spot where Vojtěch met up with King Boleslav II in 993 (Boleslav having founded the Diocese of Prague in 973), and founded the monastery.
These days, most of its 4.5 kilometres flows through pipelines, including under Nový Svět, before it meets the open air again around Jelení příkop (see pic). Heading back underground at Prašný most, it ultimately flows into the Vltava at Klárov.
The Písecká brána / Sand Gate in Prague 6 is not only not named after the town of Písek (have a read of https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2023/03/19/prague-3-day-175-pisecka/ if you want to find out about there anyway), but also has an alternative name: Bruská brána / Bruska Gate, after the stream.
A jelen is a stag. The street is named after Jelení příkop – the Deer Moat – a moat which separates the promontory of Prague Castle and the castle’s northern forecourt.
Destroyed in the Malá Strana fire of 1541 (see below), it was soon rebuilt.
Later, during the reign of Rudolph II (1575 to 1608slash11itscomplicated), game were introduced to the garden, hence the name, and hence hunting until the 1740s or so.
Jelení příkop’s wildlife days weren’t over, though – in the 1920s, President Masaryk received two bears as a gift from legionnaires in Russia and set up what is apparently known as a medvědárium here, because Czech is awesome.
On 8 May 1945, during the Prague Uprising, 21 Czechs, both soldiers and civilians, were tortured and murdered by the occupying forces on the moat’s ramp. Something about the fact that ten of them were never even identified really hits you.
Jelení příkop was closed to the public pretty much from that moment on, only being fully reopened in 1999. It’s quite nice to walk around.
Why not liven your breakfast up with this footage of the most 1998 music festival ever, which was also held at JP:
Carl Bernhard Graf Chotek von Chotkowa und Wognin was born in Vienna in 1783.
His father, Johann Nepomuk Rudolph Graf Chotek von Chotkow und Wognin, after serving as finance minister in Vienna, became Supreme Burgave of Bohemia from 1802 to 1805; in this role, he was responsible for, amongst other things, the opening of Stromovka.
It was also in 1802 that Karel, having studied law in Vienna and Prague, joined the civil service in Prague, later serving as regional governor in Hranice na Moravě and Přerov.
Having served successfully in the Austrian Army in the Napoleonic Wars, he was rewarded with the governorship of a slightly more faraway location – Trieste, where he managed to make a decent contribution to the development both of Trieste and Istria.
In 1826, he followed in his father’s footsteps and became Supreme Burgrave of Moravia. In the role until 1843, he helped make huge improvements to Prague’s infrastructure: streets, squares, sewers, public parks and social services were all created in this time.
He saw to the construction of what is now Most Legií / Legion Bridge, which, in 1841, became only the second bridge over the Vltava in the city, after the obvious one.
A year before, Chotkovy sady – opened in 1832 as the first public park in Prague – had been named after him.
Resigning as burgave in 1843, he withdrew from public life and moved to Březno Castle, ultimately dying in Vienna in 1868. The role of Burgrave was never filled by a Czech again after 1843.
And you know what else is pretty cool? This 1839 snap of Chotek and his family is the oldest Czech photograph ever.
Meanwhile, Chotkovy sady, to state the bleeding obvious, has excellent views. If you’re visiting Prague and you’ve forgotten which tram route they most recommend to tourists, it’s the 22 and 23 along here.
As well as this impressive monument dedicated to writer Julius Zeyer (1841-1901).
And this 1991 monument by Pavel Krbálek, celebrating the restoration of democracy in 1989.
On Chotkova itself, during the Prague Uprising, Protectorate Minister of Education and Public Education and general awful pro-Nazi person Emanuel Moravec shot himself in the head on 5 May 1945, while driving away to avoid capture. Prague would be liberated four days later.
Graphic artist Jiří Balcar was also lose his life on this street, as a result of his a car accident in 1968, just a week after Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia. You can see some of his brilliant film posters here: https://www.terryhoponozky.cz/plakaty/parametr-1-autori/1-balcar-jiri
Chotkova also includes a footbridge between Chotka and Letenské sady (famously described as ‘hideous’ by Václav Havel).
And a sculpture of the Czech Lion, created by Josef Max in 1952 to commemorate Czech soldiers who died in Italy in 1848. It’s been here since 1953.
Badeniho was built in 1905 and shared with Prague 6 and Prague 7 (yes, I know that’s a 6 on the sign).
Kazimierz Feliks Badeni was born into a noble family in the village of Surochów (then Galicia, now south-east Poland) in 1846.
Graduating from his law studies in Kraków, he joined the Austrian civil service in 1866, initially working in the Ministries of the Interior and Agriculture, before becoming a district governor in Zhovkva (now in Lviv Oblast), then in Rzeszów (now in Poland).
In 1888, he would become governor of Galicia – but a much more powerful role was going to come his way a few years later.
Franz Joseph tasked Badeni – a devoted monarchist who had managed to reduce Polish-Ukrainian tensions in Galicia – with forming a government.
As Prime Minister, Badeni promptly did the most likely thing to get the Young Czech Party / Mladočeši on side, and ended the state of emergency. In 1896, he also got rid of Prince Franz Anton von Thun und Hohenstein, the unpopular Governor of Bohemia.
In the same year, Badeniho extended the range of people who could vote to include men over the age of 24 who, previously, had not been allowed to vote due to not paying sufficient taxes.
Still trying to get Young Czech support, Badeni declared in April 1897 that the civil service in Bohemia would use Czech and German equally, and that civil servants would have to be proficient in both by 1901. A similar ruling for Moravia followed in the same month.
Most of the Germans in the civil service reacted to this even worse than your expat friends in the Czech Republic do when they find out they need to reach A2 to get permanent residency.
The Young Czechs were quite pleased; the Vienna press were not, and German nationalists decided that rioting was a more useful reaction than asking their friends if they knew a decent, well-priced Czech teacher.
By November, Franz Joseph had decided to let Badeni go, after two years at the helm. It probably hadn’t helped that, two months earlier, Badeni had reacted to an insult by nationalist politician Karl Hermann Wolf by challenging him to a duel (and got injured).
Badeni would die on a train in 1909, while travelling back to Galicia after a stay in Karlovy Vary, where he had been treated for diabetes. These pictures, by an unknown author, are of his funeral.
Badeniho contains both the Israeli and Spanish embassies – but not in the Prague 1 part.
And while we don’t get a Badeniho / Praha 1’ sign, we do get this quite nice commemorative plaque.
Thomas was one of Jesus’s Twelve Apostles, specifically the one who had a particular talent for doubting. A ‘doubting Thomas’ in Czech is a nevěřící Tomáš.
(Side note: in Polish, it’s a niewierny Tomasz, which would make most Czechs assume that Tom is cheating on you)
To Christians, he’s the patron saint of India, and they celebrate 3 July, the Feast of Saint Thomas, as Indian Christians’ Day. Further to the west, he’s given his name to the island nation of São Tomé e Principe.
As mentioned in (As mentioned in (https://x.com/ed__ley/status/ed__ley/status/1688070989836419072…), Mariánské hradby consisted of multiple bastions named after saints, of which St Thomas’s Bastion / bašta sv. Tomáše was number 18.), Mariánské hradby consisted of multiple bastions named after saints, of which St Thomas’s Bastion / bašta sv. Tomáše was number 18.
The current road follows the same route as the former bastion.
Number 5 in the street is the villa both built and lived in by nobleman-slash-architect Rudolf Stockar (1886-1957), in the geometric modernist style.
What's in a Prague street name 
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