Old Town is a historic part of Prague that was formed by merging several settlements and was surrounded by walls.

Old Town, 2004Photo: Maros M r a z (Maros), 2004 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Old Town is a historic part of Prague. According to the description of the Prague 1 municipal district, it is the first Prague town, which arose in the area between Prague Castle and Vyšehrad.[1]

The beginnings of settlement

The area of today's Old Town is in some sources called Mezigrady. It was a settlement outside the princely seat, which is possibly older than is usually assumed. The built-up area took shape along natural routes, which included the Vltava river and its tributaries, and along artificial routes, footpaths, streets, fords and finally bridges.[1] At first it was scattered timber buildings with isolated small stone churches, manors, settlements and villages, until the settlement acquired a firm shape in the form of town walls.[1]

Old Town arose from the merging of haphazard buildings and an ethnically diverse population. Besides the Slavic settlement there were also foreign settlements: Germans lived in the settlement of Poříč around the Church of St. Peter, Romance peoples between the churches of St. Michael and St. Linhart, and Jewish settlements stood near today's street U staré školy and later around the Old New Synagogue.[1]

Havelské Město and the walls

The only planned part of Old Town was the settlement around the Church of St. Havel, called Havelské Město. It was founded by Eberhard, the first reeve and master of the mint of King Wenceslaus I (1230 to 1250). At the same time the walls were built along the axis of today's streets Národní, 28. října, Na příkopě and Revoluční. The wall of Havelské Město was five hundred metres long and ran straight.[1] According to the text of the municipal district, it is only the walls that make the settlement a town, because they represented not only protection but also a privilege that only the king could grant.[1]

Prague in a wider context

The text of the municipal district also recalls the testimony from the years 965 to 966, when the Arab-Jewish merchant Ibrahim ibn Yaqub al-Tartushi visited Prague as a member of an embassy of the Caliph of Córdoba. It survives only in later copies, according to which Prague was built of stone and lime and was the centre of extensive trade.[1] According to the calendar of Daniel Adam of Veleslavín, Prague was founded on 2 November 723.[1] The municipal district describes Old Town as the capital of Prague.[1] Its construction began in 1994 and ended in the autumn of 1996. [2] The centre connects Na Příkopě street with Ovocný trh. [2] The name of today's administrative and commercial centre Myslbek comes from the art association whose exhibition pavilion stood here in the 1930s and 1940s. [2] At the end of the 1920s a gap in the street frontage arose in Na Příkopě street when Česká banka Union had a bank building and five historically valuable houses demolished for a planned new headquarters. [2]

Pages linking here

Sources

Městská část Praha 1
Blesk.cz — 14 October 2026