Isn’t the center in Žižkov? The construction of the fifth Prague pole awakens geodesists in people
When we say the center of Prague, we probably think of the busy center of the metropolis. Representatives of the City Hall of Prague 3 and the Institute of Planning and Development of the City m of Prague (IPR), however, marked it last week on a children’s playground in the Balkans. A concrete bollard with a conical shape was placed here as part of the recession to mark the center of the city. Many Prague residents, however, lie in their stomachs.
“That’s a clear email! The center of Prague is in Americké on náměstí, in the middle of the fountain,” wrote Karel Nohavica on the IPR Facebook profile. I do not agree with the location of the center of the metropolis on the territory of Prague 3, nor do many others. The center of the city is actually marked by a bollard at the intersection of the connecting lines of the so-called Prague poles. These four outermost bodies were marked by the IPR on the outskirts of the capital already last year. “That’s the intersection of the extremes, not the middle, it would only apply to regular shapes, you can certainly see that the middle is too high,” laments user Martin Šanda. Other Prague residents, on the other hand, take that center as a nice joke. “The recession mostly turned into a building geodetic debate after us,” summarizes IPR Jiří Vík on Facebook.
If we were to proceed from the data and coordinates that can be found about the city center on the municipal portal praha.eu, the exact center of Prague is actually located roughly somewhere in the middle of a shop with luxury fashion clothes just a few steps from the Old Town Square. Practically right next to this shop, Dlouhá Street begins, its neighbor towards the square is the Pavlan Monastery. The representatives of the Institute of Planning and Development are probably aware of this fact, and together with Prague 3, they are trying to make it clear from the beginning that the center cannot be taken too seriously. “There are many ways to determine the center of an irregular body like Prague, but this is the intersection of the connecting lines of the poles. It is the only one of these ways where it is a publicly accessible place. That’s why we chose him,” says IPR director Ondřej Boháč.
According to many Praguers, it is a shame that the center of Prague is not called the central pole of Prague, after the other poles to which it refers in its appearance. The debate about the accuracy of measuring the city’s means would thus be pointless. It is true that all four poles are publicly accessible places. However, only north and south are located quite accurately. The West Pole was built elsewhere for the airport. The eastern one had to be moved additionally at the instigation of the locals. In the vicinity of Úval, “pole seekers” were scaring wild pigs. “Póly are the most remote places in Prague. One is in the forest, one is near the airport, one is located in the south by the river, and the last one is in the north next to the track. In the case of this new one, Prague 3 went a bit overboard with the big sign. I hope it will only be here temporarily,” says journalist and pole popularizer Janek Rubeš in his YouTube video.