During my last trip to Prague I had the chance, thanks to Prague Food by Foot Tour, to discover Karlín, an interesting neighborhood close to the city centre and famous for its restaurants.
Visiting a city is always an opportunity to discover and to live its local culture. Karlín represents such an important part in Prague traditions, and it was nice, for me, to discover some interesting anecdotes about this area.
Let’s find out 5 fun facts about Karlín neighborhood in Prague.
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It used to be a town
Karlín became part of the city of Prague only in 1922. Before that, it used to be an industrial town, full of factories and workers. For this reason, walking around this neighborhood, you can still see 3 old factory’s smokestacks.
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It created the first Prague tram-line
Karlín is the place where, around 1880, the first Prague tram-line was built. This important invention was a response to the need of bringing working-class people to the city centre (the National Theatre was just opened) and was made by František Křižík, a famous inventor and electrical engineer, still popular in Karlín.
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It was overflowed
In 2002 Karlín suffered a huge flood: the river overflowed, submerging the entire area, and ruining most of the buildings. Nowadays, looking at them, you will notice that lower parts have different shades of colours, because they were ruined by the water and needed to be restored.
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It’s the Communist Party birthplace
In Karlín the Communist Czechoslovakian party was founded. This happened in U Zábranských pub, it’s still open and you can have a beer there!
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It hosts the second biggest church in the country
In Karlín you can visit the second biggest church in the entire country, the Saints Cyril and Methodius Church (it used to be the biggest one until the Saint Vitus Cathedral was built). Cyril and Methodius are very important personalities in the Czech culture because were decisive in the preservation of Czech lingual tradition. In Prague an Orthodox Cathedral is dedicated to them too.
(+1) It brings you to beer 😉
As I said, Karlín is famous for the food culture. There’s a big variety of good restaurants, and you can find out more reading the blog post Tasting Czech food in Prague. But food in Prague is not enough, right? You know you are in the city of beer, and Karlín helps you with a tunnel, linking the food area (Karlín, indeed) to the beer area (Žižkov) of the city. The funny part is that at the entrance of the tunnel there’s a huge “Neboj” that means “Don’t be afraid”! 🙂
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