Karlín District in Prague

Karlín (Karolinenthal in German) was founded in 1817 and named in honour of Karolína Augusta, the wife of Emperor Franz I. Before that there was a lodging house for disabled soldiers and their families, which was built between 1731 and 1737. Adjacent to it was a military cemetery. In 1847 the first gasworks of Prague were built there, which supplied town gas to 200 lamps in the town centre. When the town walls were demolished in 1870’s, the land in today’s Karlín belonged to the cheapest in the town. Therefore, a number of factories and houses grew there. Now Karlín is a seat of dozens of international corporations with offices for thousands of employees. Thanks to that, Karlín can boast of rich infrastructure with many restaurants, bars and other attractive places. In comparison to the city centre, this part of the city is still quite cheap, that’s why it is popular not only with local inhabitants. An important construction in this quarter is the Negrelli Viaduct, which will soon become another cultural centre of Prague. In 2002 Karlín was completely flooded and devastated by water, which made several houses fall down, and it took a year before the local life was restored.