Like any city, Prague has lost certain elements of its past to the mists of time. Now, these items live on only as a name whose significance few understand. The lost train station at Tešnov is one such element of Prague’s past.

In the north-eastern part of Prague, where the border of Prague 1 is drawn and the city centre becomes Prague 8, there is a little tram stop called Tešnov (pronounced Tesh-noff). It is currently served by one tram –  number 14 – which will either cross the bridge into the neighbourhood called Holešovice or will join the main traffic into the city centre.

The area around the tram stop looks rather miserable. There is a turntable for trams, even though I’ve only seen it be used once, a wide pavement and a small green that could almost be a park if it were not for the large concrete columns holding up a main artery into the city.

This road is poorly designed; it funnels traffic straight into the heart of the city instead of guiding it around a ring road and letting the traffic filter in slowly in a controlled fashion. It is heavily used as it is a means to bisect the city and therefore cut journey times. But this road was not supposed to be here.

The Soviets had built it because they had wanted an easy way of getting tanks and military hardware into Wenceslas Square quickly in the event of an uprising. They planned this in the 1970s and, as we know, they didn’t roll in the big guns when the Velvet Revolution arose in 1989. The road is still there, though, for better or for worse.

The road follows part of the Lost Walls of Prague’s New Town.

Few lived beyond these walls which made the neighbourhood of Karlin ideal for the plans for Invalidovna.

Previously, there was a train station sited right here. Judging by the photographs this station was a grandiose neo-Renaissance building that housed a passenger terminal. It was originally built by the North-Western Austrian train company in 1875 and linked Prague to the Austrian rail network. By 1915, the station was renamed Denis station in honour of a French historian and politician who supported the origin of an independent Czechoslovakia. In 1948, it reverted back to its original name of Prague-Tešnov.

It continued to be in use until 1 July 1972, with the departure of the last passenger train, number 1115. The Soviets sent in engineers to build the North-South arterial road and the ruins of the train station, mainly the facade and a few rooms, stood beside this new development for quite some time. The ruins were protected but were left to rot and never used.

In 1985, a discussion in one of the local papers raised the question of what these ruins could be used for and a few suggestions were mooted to try to put the ruins to some good use. Before anything was done about this, on March 16, the Soviets dynamited the rest of Prague-Tešnov, consigning it to people’s memories and bequeathing its name to the tram stop that still stands there.

Interestingly, in 1991, a group of aficionados formed the Society for Rebuilding Tešnov Station but judging by the lack of results, this may never amount to much …

Update (Late 2015): The National Technical Museum of Prague has more information about the station, including numerous photos showing the interior of the station, and showing how the building was blown up. Well worth a visit if you like this sort of thing!

What other missing parts of Prague do you wish were still around?