The Coal Market

The Coal Market or in Czech Uhelny Trh, is one of the many squares in the centre of Prague. The first mention of a market in this area is 1232 when Havels Town was defined by King Wenceslas I and wealthy traders settled in the area. The present-day Havelska Street Market leads you to the triangular-shaped Coal Market.

By the 14th Century it was known locally as the Coal Market but there are three possible reasons why this happened. One is that a coal seller moved here from another location. Another is that a blacksmith built a forge here and sold coal. Or it might have been because a coal smelter (a person that burns wood to make charcoal) had moved into the area. Or another possibility is that because it was also a vegetable market the German word for cabbage “Kohl” found it’s way into the local parlance i.e. Kohl Market.

prague coal market renaissance architecture — Coal Market Architecture

By the middle of the 19th Century both the coal smelter and the forge had gone, probably in an attempt to clean up the area. On the location of the blacksmiths forge was built a water fountain. In 1894 the advent of electricity meant an internal covered market was built in an adjacent street and the Coal Market importance gradually reduced. The original fountain was demolished around this time.

The Wimmer Fountain

The fountain which is there now has an interesting history. It was originally built in 1797 for a Colonel in the imperial army called Jacob Wimmer and placed in front of the Wimmer Palace in the New Alley (present-day Narodni 37). Due to the construction of a new road it was moved to Jungmann Square, then to Bethlehem Square and finally to the park in front of the Main Train Station in 1882. The fountain was moved to the Coal Market in 1951. After vandalism in 1974 the original statue was moved to the Prague Lapidárium and replaced by a copy. In 2011 Jachym Bem, the son of a former Prague Mayor, was part of a group of young men who again vandalised the statue. In this case a 200Kg piece of the statue fell on him and as a result his right hand had to be amputated.

Public Toilets

There have been public toilets in the Coal Market since 1888. When first built they were one of 12 sites operated privately by a man called Bohdan Procházká. Unfortunately he went mad but not before transferring the business to his wife Marie Procházková in 1889. The Coal Market wooden hut toilet was “first-class” meaning that it had a tiled floor, mirrors and it was heated. Mrs Procházková operated public toilets until 1937. The original Coal Market toilet was removed in 1925 when the present-day underground toilets opened (in the picture you can see one of the grey chimney stacks for the heating system).

The School

The building at 425/4 is a school (pictured). If you look above the doors the left one says “Obecni Škola u Sv Havla” and the right one says “Obecni Škola u Sv Jilji”. This signifies that the building was actually two parish schools with the left side for children from the ST Havel’s Parish and the right side for children from the nearby ST Giles Parish.