Agricultural Prague. One-fifth of the area is made up of fields and more apple trees grow here than in the Vysočina region
A century ago, we would have found farmsteads and large fields in many places in Prague, which are now dominated by buildings, especially housing, and where hundreds of thousands of people live there. Břevnov or Smíchov, for example, were key to supplying the city with crops. And almost a fifth of the city’s land is still occupied today – barley and wine are grown here. And over 100,000 apple trees grow here. That’s more than in the whole Highlands.
When Greater Prague was established in 1922 and 37 surrounding towns and villages joined the eight original works, the area of the Czech capital increased about eight times. And the share of agricultural land in the city has multiplied even more. Aktuálně.cz brings another part of the series Prague 100 Years of the City, this time he is dedicated to agriculture.
Maps and quantifications of field areas from 1933 reveal that although the share of agricultural land in the original parts of Prague was minimal, in the newly connected districts such as Dejvice, Vokovice, Hloubětín, Jinonice or Hostivař, it easily occupied up to half of the area. And even in the 1960s, large fields were characteristic of Petřiny, Zličín or Modřany, for example.
Plan of Greater Prague from 1922 to 1924 Photo: Institute of History of the ASCR
Although most of this area was covered by panel housing estates in the following decades, the field can still be found in Prague today. According to the latest data from the Czech Statistical Office, in 2020 the sown area in the metropolis was about 92 hectares, which is 18.5 percent of the total area of the city. They are, of course, located mainly on the outskirts, mostly in the cadastre of Ruzyně, Sliven, Březiněves, Třeboradice, Dubče or Uhříněves. The closest to the center you can find agricultural land around Děvín and Hlubočep, which is about 2.5 kilometers as the crow flies from Vyšehrad.
About five thousand hectares are covered by cereal fields – especially wheat and barley. Rapeseed is also widely grown, on approximately 2,000 hectares. And in the capital are also represented potatoes – on an area of nine hectares. But what makes Prague stand out and surpasses even several times larger regions is the number of fruit trees. More than 104,000 apple trees grow in the city – seven times more than in the entire Karlovy Vary region and twice as much as in the Vysočina region.
Vineyards in Smíchov and Letná
However, it is not surprising, and the historian Jan Malý from the National Agricultural Museum confirms that Prague cannot be considered a traditionally agricultural city. For most of its existence, it has been dependent on crop imports from the surrounding economic belt. Inside the city, the fields were always slow, and as they spread out against the walls on the edge of the then-development. Some townspeople as well as clergy from the monasteries then harvested crops from their gardens. “They were fruit trees, apples, medicinal herbs. Peas were also commonly grown,” said Little.
But there is also a crop that is inextricably linked to Prague – the vine. In recent centuries, although the vineyards have gradually given way to houses and other crops, and today they occupy only about 15 hectares of the city, but historical Prague was its main producer. The oldest records of vineyards in Prague date from the 11th century, but according to legend, at the beginning of the 10th century, Prince St. Wenceslas took care of the wine on the southern slope below Prague Castle. According to that, it is now called St. Wenceslas.
The greatest development of the vineyards was experienced in the middle of the 14th century, when Charles IV. issued an order to start building on the slopes around the then Prague. Where residential areas are usually located today.
Some places in Prague were given a name by the wine, which it has preserved to this day – in addition to Vinohrady, for example, Vinoři. However, we would also find vineyards in the Middle Ages in Žižkov, on the slopes of Petřín, in Smíchov or in Letná.
Other Prague places were left with names derived from crops that farmers from the area came to sell here. For example, at Ječná Street it was barley, at the parallel Žitná rye and on Senovážné náměstí it was hay.
Vegetables from Vyšehrad and fruits from monasteries
The description of the district of Prague published in 1882 tells us how Prague was managed in the 1960s, ie just before its walls were demolished. We learn, for example, that larger gardens and fields were located in Hradčany, on the eastern slope of Petřín . , in Karlov and pod Vyšehradem. Rye, barley and industrial crops were mainly grown from grain.
“The best fields and gardens were behind the Strahov Gate, behind the monastery towards Pohořelec. On the contrary, the ones near Vyšehrad were the least fertile,” historian Jan Malý quotes the documentary. On the other hand, just under Vyšehrad and Podskalí, most vegetables were grown. Fruit trees could be found in the gardens of the monasteries. We also know that 442 cows lived in the then four cities of Prague. “They mainly raised milk,” adds Malý.
Of the city’s roughly 160,000 inhabitants, only about seven hundred people subsisted exclusively on plowing. ” and cramped spaces, ”adds the historian.
After the demolition of the walls in the 1970s, construction began in Prague and its surroundings, and arable land in formerly key satellites, such as Karlín, began to shrink.
The history of Prague agriculture is inextricably linked with farmsteads. Hundreds of them were scattered around the cities of Prague. In the Middle Ages and the Modern Age, they typically originated in the west of the then Prague cities, for example in Střešovice or Břevnov.
But we would also find them in Dejvice, Smíchov (especially around Anděl), Karlín or Podolí. Although many of them have disappeared, they have left their mark on public transport names, for example.
Although they used to be for economic purposes, most of them underwent many changes. For example, Kajetánka on the border of Břevnov and Střešovice has an interesting history. It was first a court with a vineyard, in the 17th century it became a monastery. A century later, the then owner had her stopped at a small mansion. During the socialist era it was a district house of pioneers and youth, after 1989 it fell into disrepair for a long time. Since 2014, it has been a luxury apartment complex.