Cafés and historic pubs remain fascinating experiences for the curious. Rich in tradition and local legends, they have invariably become interlinked with a variety of personalities who have in their own way, helped to shape a city’s cultural identity. Like an intellectual life-blood to the city’s artistic mind, some have attracted leading philosophers and writers, like what Vienna’s Café Central was for Stefan Zweig or what Prague’s Café Louvre was for Franz Kafka. Alfred Polgar described the Viennese coffeehouse as being the “meridian of loneliness,” where people who craved solitude “want company as they do so.” Cafés also could become venues for musical performance, such as Vienna’s oldest Café Frauenhuber, where Mozart once played. I have tried to gather together any oral traditions which still circulate in Prague, claiming that Mozart may have been there.
Mozart may have drunk coffee on the street known as Templova. Situated in Prague’s Old Town, the street is near the Pachtuv Palace on Celetna, which also claims musical connections with him. In the same vicinity is Štupartská Street, which had the long-vanished U Štupartsků, where he also said to have drank. U Štupartsků (“By Štupartsků”) could have been a venue during any of his five visits, although its location close to the Powder Gate in Prague’s Old Town could again point to the second 1787 visit. Another nearby pub was said to have been called U Modrého Hroznu “House of the Blue Grapes,” in which he drank. Building by this name is today to be found on Husova.
These legends have become so embedded in Prague’s cultural history that it is almost impossible to corroborate them – but they have in a way become valuable in themselves, regardless of whether they are fact. Documented evidence of where Mozart socialized in Prague is sketchy; Mozart himself described these things rarely – unlike his father, Leopold Mozart – we do know that he attended a popular ball with Josef Emanuel Malabayla, Count von Canal (1745-1826) at the mid-eighteenth-century Breitfeld Palace on Nerudova Street, in the Lesser Town, because he mentions it to von Jacquin in the same letter (15.1.1787)
Elizabeth Jane Timms is a writer, historian, and freelance royal journalist. She contributes to an international academic journal about royalty and also writes for magazines and the web.
http://royalcentral.co.uk/author/ejtimms
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethjtimms/