Prague officially approves name of new Dvorecký bridge opening next month

Municipal councilors formally approved today Dvorecký bridge as the name for the new bridge that will connect the districts of Podolí in Prague 4 and Zlíchov in Prague 5.

Construction for the long-awaited bridge began in 2022, the landmark is finally set to open to pedestrians, cyclists and public transport connections on April 17.

Originally planned for January 2025, the ambitious and expensive project faced multiple delays and over-costs, including due to difficult riverbed conditions.

Used as a working name throughout the construction process, Dvorecký was also backed by more than three-quarters of Prague respondents to a public survey launched by the municipality, favored over St. Agnes of Bohemia, a 13th-century Czech princess and nun.

Dvorecký, on the other hand, is a reference to the Czech word “Dvorce”, a small historic settlement on the right bank of the Vltava.

Former tentative plans to name it after Smíchov-born, Clinton-era U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was eventually dropped. Other short-lived rumored female contenders included tennis legend Martina Navrátilová or pro-democracy lawyer Milada Horáková, executed by the communist regime in 1950.

While the results of the open poll were clear, Prague 5 mayor Lukáš Herold expressed hopes that a suitable building or landmark honoring St. Agnes of Bohemia will be built in the future – although the Bohemian princess currently has a convent, a church and a street bearing her name.

For now, however, none of Prague’s main 15 bridges are named after women.

Tram lines 20 and 21 will run through the new 360-meter-long bridge and connect Modřany to Anděl in one direction and Slivenec to Palackého náměstí in the other. It will also include a large walkway for pedestrians and dedicated bicycle paths.

Although off-limit on the bridge itself, car drivers are expected to benefit from the easing of traffic and congestion at the Barrandov Bridge.

“This project is going to save a lot of people a lot of time,” Deputy Mayor for Transport Zdeněk Hřib told Expats.cz as construction was still ongoing. “Prague 4 and 5 are two very large parts of the city in terms of area and population.”

The last new bridge to have opened over the Vltava River in Prague was the HolKa (an acronym meaning 'girl' in Czech) footbridge connecting since 2023 Holešovice and Karlín over the Štvanice island.