Praha hlavní nádraží
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 View of the station from Vinohradská street | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| General information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Location | Vinohrady, Prague Czech Republic | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Coordinates | 50°04′59″N 14°26′09″E / 50.0830556°N 14.4358333°E | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Owned by | Správa železnic | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Platforms | 9 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Construction | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Architect | Vojtěch Ignác Ullmann Antonín Viktor Barvitius Josef Fanta | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Other information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Station code | 54570762 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| IATA code | XYG | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fare zone | PID: P[1] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Opened | 14 December 1871 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rebuilt | 1901–1909 1972–1979 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Electrified | 1926–1928 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Praha hlavní nádraží (IATA: XYG)[2] is the largest railway station in Prague, Czech Republic. It opened in 1871 as Franz Josef Station, after Franz Joseph I of Austria. During the First Republic and from 1945 to 1948 the station was called Wilson Station (Czech: Wilsonovo nádraží), after the former President of the United States Woodrow Wilson.
The station is the largest Art Nouveau monument in the Czech Republic.[3] Since December 31, 1976, it has been a cultural monument of the Czech Republic and since 1993 it has been part of the Municipal monument zone of Vinohrady, Žižkov and Vršovice.[4]
In 2014, the station served 224,505 trains (610 daily) and more than 53,000,000 passengers[5][6] (71,000 daily)[7] and a number of regional, national and international trains, for which it is often the starting or final station. The station is connected to Prague Metro Line C and the Hlavní nádraží railway station.
Overview
[edit]Initial construction
[edit]
The imperial decision of October 1866 to demolish the walls contributed to the construction of the railway station in the current location.[8] The station has been in operation since December 14, 1871, when the southbound Emperor Franz Joseph Railway service to Benešova, Tábora and Vienna started from it. At the time, the station was known as "Franz Josef Station".
In 1872, the Turnovsko-Kralupsko-Prague railway was terminated at a separate station close to the Emperor František Josef Railway station. The two stations soon merged. The Prague Connecting Railway was also put into operation on the Smíchov (Czech Western Railway), Prague and Hrabovka (connected to the Austrian Northwestern Railway) routes, thus connecting the stations of four different companies. The Vinohrady tunnel led the railways to Vienna and Smíchov separately, only after the double-tracking of the connecting railway in 1901 were the two lines connected already in front of the Vršov portal.
The original narrative building was built according to the design of Vojtěch Ignác Ullmann and Antonín Viktor Barvitius in a Renaissance Revival style. The 150-meter-long building with two towers, a hall with a coffered ceiling, a restaurant, offices and 22 doors leading to a mosaic-paved platform has earned the nickname "castle station".[8] Velký park was founded in front of the station in 1876.
Art Nouveau station construction (1901–1909)
[edit]
The capacity of the original building and track was no longer sufficient for the development of the railway. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the station was therefore rebuilt and enlarged. The Art Nouveau station building and station hall were built between 1901 and 1909,[9] designed by Czech architect Josef Fanta on the site of the old dismantled Neo-Renaissance station designed by Czech architects Antonín Viktor Barvitius and Vojtěch Ignác Ullmann.[10]
The dome above the main part of the building is decorated with art nouveau motifs and sculptures by Stanislav Sucharda and Ladislav Šaloun depicting Czech cities. The cash desks were located on the ground floor of the dome in the premises of today's cafe. Passengers were served by generously designed waiting rooms in the left wing of the building and two restaurants of different price levels. From the beginning, the building also had offices and lounges for important guests, where for example Tomáš Masaryk, Thomas Edison, Le Corbusier or Charlie Chaplin waited for the train.[11][3] The lounges were luxuriously furnished, decorated with sculptures and large-scale paintings with motifs of Prague and Karlštejn from the studios of Václav Jansa and Viktor Stretti.[12] The lounges are closed to the public and are used for special occasions or are rented out for commercial purposes. Underpasses were built together with the new building, the railway yard was roofed in 1905–1906[9] by a two-nave steel arched hall with a span of 2 x 33.3 m, a height of 18 m and a length of 233 m, the authors of which were Jaroslav Marjanko and Rudolf Kornfeld. The construction was made by the S. Bondy bridge factory in Bubny. The hall covers the current platforms no. 1 to 4, platform no. 1A is pushed out from the main roof to the Vinohrady headland, the later built platforms 5 to 7 have their own roof, which in shape refers to the structure of the hall.
20th-century electrification and expansion
[edit]As early as 1910, the Austrian Ministry of Transport began to consider the electrification of the railways in Vienna and Prague.[13] At that time, the businessman Emil Kolben made an offer to the Austro-Hungarian State Railways to electrify the Prague junctions with a 10 kV 16 Hz system, but it was not accepted.[14] The Ministry of Railways of the Czechoslovak Republic began to deal with the idea of electrification again immediately after its establishment. At the beginning of 1924, a direct current system of 1500 V was chosen as the optimal one. On August 12, 1926, in the presence of František Křižík and locomotive E 407.001, construction work was ceremonially started. On April 23, 1928, a shift to electric traction began at Wilson station, and on April 27, electric traction passenger trains started to Vysočany. With the new timetable, regular electric operation on all electrified lines began on May 15, 1928. Power supply and charging of battery locomotives was provided by the Křenovka transformer station.[15] The locomotives were deposited in the boiler room at Wilson Station, which was railed.
After the First World War, the line to Smíchov was double-tracked. In 1926, the monorail connection Vítkov – Prague-Libeň railway station was completed; Vítkov track), which completed the monorail coupling on the other side of the hill, via Hrabovka, in 1872.
In 1940 to 1944, the second Vinohradský tunnel was built. All traffic was transferred to it so that the reconstruction of the first tunnel could be carried out. After its completion, the tracks to Vršovice and Smíchov were definitively divided.
Construction of the subway, new vestibule and highway (1967–1979)
[edit]
After the Second World War, a number of studies were prepared for the reconstruction of the station in connection with the increase of its capacity. Josef Danda was particularly involved in them. In 1948, Josef Danda and Antonín Bloman prepared a study predicting the extension of the track to the area of the historic building and its replacement with a new building. In the years 1948–1956, other proposals were created (authors Josef Danda, Cyril Suk, collectives of the project institutes SUDOP Prague and Stavoprojekt). In 1950, a competition was held for the overall solution of the central station, including an underground railway. At the beginning of the 1960s, an internal competition took place in SUDOP (in which designs were created by architects Homoláč and Reiterman, Jaroslav Otruba, and Josef Danda). In 1965, a public competition was announced, in which the design of the collective Eugen Kramár, Berta Hornema, J. Gerstbrein won, proposing the abolition of the historic building. In 1970, an open architectural competition was announced for the design of the check-in hall, in which the design of architects Jan Šrámek, Jan Bočan and Alena Šrámková won in the second round, which was finally implemented.[16]
The station was extended by a new terminal building, built between 1972 and 1979, including an underground metro station and a main road on the roof of the terminal. The new terminal building claimed a large part of the park, and the construction of the road cut off the neo-renaissance station hall from the town.
In 2011 a partial refurbishment of the station was completed by Italian company Grandi Stazioni,[17] which had leased retail space for 30 years from 2002.[18] In 2016 Grandi Stazioni lost the concession after failing to complete the renovation of the historic building by the extended contractual deadline.[19]
In September 2021, a second exit was opened connecting the station to Winston Churchill Square in Žižkov via an underpass.[20]
The station was the embarkation point for the children evacuated to London Liverpool Street station via the Port of Harwich by Nicholas Winton. In 2009 a statue was unveiled on platform 1 commemorating this.
Train services
[edit] |
Long-distance services
[edit]The station is an international transport hub, handling services to Germany (Munich, Bavaria-Bohemia RE (Regio-Express) services, and EuroCity/EuroNight services to Berlin, Dresden and Hamburg), Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Ukraine, and Croatia in summer. Services are operated by express trains, and also by ČD Class 680 Pendolino. Services are operated by Czech Railways and by open-access train operators LEO Express, RegioJet, and Arriva.
Regional services
[edit]In addition to international services, trains serve most of the larger Czech cities, such as Brno, Plzeň, České Budějovice, and Olomouc.
Suburban services
[edit]The station is served by most of the Esko Prague lines which are not dispatched from the nearby Masaryk Railway station.
Intercity Bus services
[edit] |
Buses towards Český Krumlov, České Budějovice, Tábor and other Czech cities, as well as the Airport Express bus service to Václav Havel Airport Prague maintained by České dráhy, depart from Wilsonova street in front of the historical building.
City transport at the station
[edit] |
The station is served by the Prague Metro's Line C directly in the area, and by the Prague tram system outside the station about 500 meters past the park in front of the new terminal.
See also
[edit]External links
[edit]References
[edit]
- ^ "Železnice v PID" (PDF). Prague Integrated Transport. 11 December 2022. Retrieved 12 April 2023.
- ^ "Praha hlavni nadrazi Airport code (XYG)". www.air-port-codes.com. Retrieved 8 December 2020.
- ^ a b "Hlavní nádraží v Praze - největší česká secesní památka". Radio Praha (in Czech). 18 May 2007. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
- ^ "železniční stanice Praha hlavní nádraží". Pamatovy Katalog (in Czech).
- ^ "Přehledně: Nejvytíženější pražská nádraží a tratě. Počty cestujících vzrostly o 14%". Zdopravy.cz (in Czech). 23 January 2018. Retrieved 30 November 2018.
- ^ "Česká republika - vlaková nádraží". www.goeuro.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 30 November 2018.
- ^ "Program rekonstrukce a revitalizace osobních nádraží 2018–2022" (PDF). Správa železniční dopravní cesty (in Czech). 29 August 2017. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 September 2017. Retrieved 9 October 2017.
- ^ a b "MČ Praha 2: č. 1 leden - Z historie hlavního nádraží". www.praha2.cz. Office of the Municipal District of Prague. Archived from the original on 20 October 2017. Retrieved 12 May 2017.
- ^ a b "Praha hlavní nádraží - obnova ocelové konstrukce historické haly nástupišť | Metrostav". www.metrostav.cz. Retrieved 20 September 2017.
- ^ Pavel Schreier. "Čekárny na nádražích i pro honoraci". cd.cz (in Czech).
- ^ "Hlavní nádraží slouží 145 let. Secesní skvost míjí 100 tisíc aut denně". iDNES.cz. MAFRA. 6 June 2016. Retrieved 12 May 2017.
- ^ "Vládní salonek na hlavním nádraží. Secesní skvost je pouze pro vyvolené". iDNES.cz. MAFRA. 22 January 2015. Retrieved 7 September 2017.
- ^ Doležal, I. "Historie železničního uzlu Praha, Doprava 5/2003 na stránkách" (PDF) (in Czech). Archived from mdcr.cz the original on 20 November 2015.
{{cite web}}: Check|url=value (help) - ^ Pohl J.: Rychlá železniční osobní doprava, díl 31., Železniční magazín 8/2011, M-Presse plus, Praha
- ^ Schreier, P.: Začátky elektrizace pražských tratí, týdeník Železničář na www.cd.cz
- ^ Nová odbavovací hala, Památkový katalog
- ^ "Czech station lease signed". Railway Gazette International. 1 February 2004.
- ^ "Presidential opening for Praha Hlavní". Railway Gazette International. 29 May 2011.
- ^ UK, DVV Media. "Grandi Stazioni loses Praha concession". Railway Gazette. Retrieved 24 November 2016.
- ^ Šindelář, Jan (13 September 2021). "Termín je na světě. Podchod z Hlavního nádraží na Žižkov se otevře koncem září". zDopravy (in Czech). Retrieved 24 September 2021.
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