Zmizel Praha – Nouzov kolonie Dolejsk Martin (2025)

Wooden or sheet-metal huts, discarded railway carriages and caravans, as well as abandoned brickworks and caves, all became makeshift homes for Pragues impoverished inhabitants during the First Republic. Emergency colonies existed in Na Krejcrku, Steovice, Veleslavn and many other locations. In the second half of the 1920s, more than two dozen such colonies reportedly stood on Pragues outskirts and sometimes near the city centre; at the beginning of the 1930s, around 15,000 people lived in them. Although the city authorities recognised the connection between this phenomenon and the housing crisis, they found no solution. This new volume in the Vanished Prague series uses a wealth of photographs to capture not only the beginnings of these colonies, but also their survival after the Second World War. In many places, their remains are still visible today.