Strašnice… zahrada Prahy, brána armád… – Státníková Pavla (2018)

This Czech-language, richly illustrated book is the eighth volume in the Prague City Museum’s long-running project about Prague’s individual districts. It presents Strašnice, an area incorporated into Greater Prague in 1922. Situated in Prague’s foreland, Strašnice was affected by virtually every siege and war that reached the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, including the Hussite Wars, the Thirty Years’ War, the wars of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War. The district also played an important role during the Prague Uprising in May 1945. Until the nineteenth century, it formed part of Prague’s agricultural hinterland; from the fourteenth century to the early seventeenth century, extensive vineyards and hop gardens stood here, while later the area became known for cabbage growing. The small original village, located on important trade routes, gradually expanded during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Nové Strašnice was established at the end of the eighteenth century. Building activity intensified at the turn of the twentieth century and during the First Republic, when Strašnice became an important residential area for Prague’s middle classes. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the district gained tram connections with Prague and a railway stop on the Prague–Benešov line. Its appearance changed dramatically in the second half of the twentieth century, when the old development of Staré Strašnice and parts of Nové Strašnice were demolished, leaving only a few surviving buildings. Important factories were established in Strašnice or nearby, including Tesla, Mitas, Jawa and Chirana, and Tesla Strašnice produced the first televisions. Almost the entire cadastral area was built up, beginning with the Solidarita housing estate in the late 1940s and early 1950s, followed by largely prefabricated housing in other parts of the district. In the early 1990s, the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary was finally built in Strašnice after sixty years of effort. Photographs and postcards dating from the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the second half of the twentieth century form the heart of the publication, supplemented by plans and graphic prints documenting the district’s social, cultural and sporting life, including Sokol Strašnice.