Wenceslas Square closes to cars for an afternoon

Prague residents and tourists roaming the familiar terrain of Wenceslas Square were greeted by a rare sight Sept. 18 as the famed boulevard was closed to traffic for six hours.

Plans to revitalize the city center gathering spot that has been the site of many of the nation's most historic events have been initiated and rejected, proposed and shot down for several years. This time, city officials hope their latest campaign to create a traffic-free Wenceslas Square will receive a jump-start by showing citizens and business owners the benefits of closing the area to automobiles.

"When I became mayor at the end of the last year, I heard from many sides that there had been talks for six years about a revitalization of Wenceslas Square, and yet nothing happened. That sort of irritated me," Prague 1 Mayor Oldřich Lomecký said during a speech on the square. "I understand we cannot keep building like Charles IV, who designed new streets, and things got going. But it is possible to speed up the whole process. And that is what we are aiming for."

City Hall has promised to begin a reconstruction project on Wenceslas Square by 2014.

"We believe that in the near future, the planning permission will soon be issued for the lower part of Wenceslas Square, and we will do everything to succeed in doing the same for the upper part," said Jan Adámek, chairman of the New Town Prague Initiative, which organized the car-free event.

Between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., no vehicles were allowed onto the square, and only cars parked there previously were allowed to leave. The event was to serve as a test case for future redevelopment plans.

Business owners said they were thrilled to see only pedestrians and cyclists drifting by their storefronts.

"I have been experiencing since this morning what I have dreamed of for 25 years," the longtime owner of a hotel on the square told the Czech News Agency. "I want to see Czechs here who are smiling and happy. This is something that is not normal here."

Over the years, Wenceslas Square, which was created by Charles IV, has been transformed from a meeting place for the social and cultural elite in the 18th and 19th centuries and a stage for Czech and Czechoslovak history, to a bustling business hub flooded with tourist shops, fast-food stands and pricey restaurants and hotels.

In 1968, tanks rolled through the square as the Warsaw Pact invasion sought to crush the reforms of the Prague Spring. In 1989, it was the site of former President Václav Havel's famed speech - on the balcony of a building now home to a Marks & Spencer - in which he formally declared the end of communist rule.

- Klára Jiřičná contributed to this report.

Jack Buehrer can be reached at
jbuehrer@praguepost.com