Havelské tržiště: The Old Market of Gall's Town
Why is it significant?
Step under the striped awnings and walk slowly between the stalls: pyramids of strawberries or plums depending on the season, bunches of flowers, wooden toys, puppets with painted faces. Notice how wide this street suddenly is, much wider than the lanes around it.
Key Facts
| Place | Havelské tržiště: The Old Market of Gall's Town |
|---|---|
| Address | Havelská, 110 00 Praha 1, Czechia |
| Geo Coordinates | 50.08480, 14.42100 |
| Part of Walk | Dark Lager and Dumplings: Prague's Historic Beer Halls & Food Markets |
| Generated | Generated |
Step under the striped awnings and walk slowly between the stalls: pyramids of strawberries or plums depending on the season, bunches of flowers, wooden toys, puppets with painted faces. Notice how wide this street suddenly is, much wider than the lanes around it. That width is eight hundred years old.
In the thirteenth century, under King Wenceslas I, a new trading town was laid out here for German merchants, with its own church dedicated to St Gall... in Czech, svatý Havel. Its market street was made deliberately broad, for carts and stalls, and a market has been held here ever since. The date usually quoted is 1232, and while the exact year is debated, few markets in Central Europe can claim such a long run in the same spot.
Imagine it in its prime. On market days peasants walked in from the villages before dawn with geese, cabbages and eggs; butchers, bakers and fishmongers had their own covered stalls, called kotce, remembered in the name of the nearby street V Kotcích. Prices, weights and quality were checked by the town, and a baker caught cheating on the weight of his bread could be publicly ducked in the river, at least according to old Prague tradition.
Today the market sells more souvenirs than cabbages, and locals will tell you, a little sadly, that they buy their vegetables elsewhere. But in early summer the cherries and strawberries are still the real thing, and the flower stalls are where Prague people pick up a bunch on the way to a birthday. Look around the corner for the green-and-cream Estates Theatre, where Mozart conducted the premiere of Don Giovanni in 1787.
Markets like this one fed the city for centuries, and they are the reason why the Old Town's streets have the shapes they do. Follow the market to its end and turn right into Melantrichova, the narrow, crowded lane that leads up towards Old Town Square... and towards the smell of smoke and roasting meat.