Legend · České Budějovice
The ghost in the storehouse
In the military bakery at the corner of Pražská třída and Pekárenská street in České Budějovice a White Lady was said to appear at night. Once she took the baker by the hand and led him toward a door no one knew. He did not go all the way.
One night when a baker in the Budějovice military storehouse was kneading bread, a White Lady appeared to him. With a gesture of her hand she signed that he should follow her.
The baker was not afraid and went.
She led him along a corridor to an unknown door. She opened it silently and both descended stairs until they came into a long dark passage. It smelled of must and a sharp wind blew through it. You could not tell where it came from; nowhere was even a crack visible.
The baker began to hesitate, finally stopped and refused to go further. The White Lady took him by the hand, but he would not yield. When she saw she could not make him go on, she led him back to the bakery and vanished.
After that incident the unknown door vanished too. No one ever found it again. Where the passage led on, and why the White Lady was taking the baker there, no one ever learned.
How it really was
The military bakeries and storehouses stood at the corner of Pražská třída and Pekárenská street from the second half of the 18th century; the Encyclopaedia of České Budějovice records the White Lady legend there.
The storehouse was not a backdrop. At the corner of today’s Pražská třída and Pekárenská street, in the second half of the eighteenth century on the site of the older Hospital Court, a large complex of military bakeries and storehouses arose.
That bakery gave its name to the whole street. Around 1800 the thoroughfare began to be called Backhausgasse, in Czech Pekárenská. It still bears that name.
The military bakery survived into the twentieth century. In the interwar period a divisional commissariat store operated there, including storehouses and a bakery. Part of the site today holds the IGY shopping centre.
The White Lady of that bakery is a recorded legend. The Encyclopaedia of České Budějovice lists it among České Budějovice legends; it entered newer tradition through Ambrož’s collection. It is not a generic ghost stuck onto Budějovice.
For the unknown door and underground passage, however, there is no building-history evidence. They remain where the legend left them: behind the hesitation that stopped the baker from going further.
Where to follow the legend
Corner of Pražská třída and Pekárenská street, České Budějovice. The street name is the last thing left there of the military bakery.
Where we know it from
- Encyklopedie Českých Budějovic, hesla Pekárenská ulice, IGY centrum, pověsti, vojenská posádka
- FIDLER, Jiří; SLUKA, Václav. Encyklopedie branné moci Republiky československé 1920–1938. Praha: Libri, 2006
- AMBROŽ, Václav. Ze starých Českých Budějovic. České Budějovice: Stráž lidu, 1921