Anděl

The name Anděl means simply "Angel" and it has been an important place for many centuries. First a crossroad near the city with a famous Angel Inn (thus came the name for the crossing itself), later the centre of a new industrial suburb Smíchov, which sprang up in the southwest of Prague in the 19th century. Today it is still an important junction for public transport with trams going into five directions from here and a bus terminal serving many parts of Prague. The metro station itself is one of the most busy in whole metro system.
It was built in 1985 as a part of the first section of line B. It is a bored station with platform located 35.4 metres deep and with two ticket halls, one of which is situated at the Anděl crossing and the otther one below the bus terminal. However, the station wasn't named Anděl originally. It was called Moskevská (like Moscow) because it was designed by Soviet architects as a "gift" for Prague, in exchange for a station in Moscow, which was designed by Czechoslovak architects (and named after Prague). But this name was purely ideological with no geographical sense, as Moskevská street is elsewhere. So it was renamed in 1990 to much nicer and more logical name Anděl.

Zobrazit místo Prague Metro na větší mapě

This is the Anděl crossing. The entrance to the metro station is on the left at the end of the modern arcade.
At the site of the modern building there had been the old Angel Inn, but it was torn down during the construction of the metro station in 1985. Smíchov was an industrial area for a long time, but since the 1990s it has been gradually changing into a commercial area with many offices, shopping centres, cinemas etc. And the first new building of this kind was this one you can see at the photo. It is called The Golden Angel and it was designed by the famous architect Jean Nouvel. The dim person on the facade is an angel from The Wings of Desire - a film by Wim Wenders. Apart of it there are also extracts from pieces of authors who lived in Prague: Franz Kafka, Gustav Meyrink, Jiří Orten, Rainer Maria Rilke and others.

And here is the entrance to the north ticket hall. When it was built, it looked different of course, as there were no such modern buildings.

The interior of the north ticket hall. It looked also quite different at the time it was built.

And the north escalator shaft.
But before we go down to the platform, let's look to the southern ticket hall and the surroundings.

Another tram crossing in the Anděl area. This place is called Na kníecí (it means something like "At the Princely grounds" but I'm not sure how this name came into use) and it is one of the important bus terminals in the southwest of Prague, with both urban and suburban bus routes starting and ending here.

A tram stop next to the bus terminal. It is funny that although this tram stop is quite grand-scale, with long platforms and multiple station signs, there is only one line in service and even one of the less used.

And one more picture concerning trams. While the tracks going across the view are the ones from the previous picture, the single track on the right is a disused tramway track which once lead to a factory where trams for Prague (and many other towns) were made. This factory was near the Anděl crossing but nowadays there is a shopping centra instead of it. Only this section of track, going from nowhere to nowhere, reminds us of the history. But how long will it persist? Who knows...

And this is one of the entrances to the south ticket hall.

And another; thos one is serving directly one of the platforms of the bus station.
On the left there are the tracks of the above-mentioned tramline and if you look closely, you can see also the disused track crossing them.

And yet another entrance, similar to the previous one but this time viewed from the opposite direction so you can see part of the bus station behind it.

The south ticket hall.

To the left of the escalators there is part of the original decoration from the communist period, saying "Moscow - Prague" which is related to the former name of the station - Moskevská.
The north ticket hall used to look similar.

South escalator shaft.

The lower end of the escalators from the south ticket hall.

The central aisle. It looks quite uncommon for line B and whole Prague metro. That's because of its origin - it is more reminiscent of some metro stations in Russia. Some people deislike this design but i think that one station of this kind is an interesting addition to Prague metro system.

A detail of the illuminant elipses at the ceiling.

The lower end of the escalators from the north ticket hall.

Eastbound platform.
(Geographically it is rather northbound, but the trains from here proceed to the east, so i kept the designation same as on the rest of the line)

One of the eight artworks (bronze relievo) on the walls behind the tracks.

An eastbound train of 81-71 stock is leaving for Karlovo náměstí.

Another eastbound train.

A view from the eastbound platform through the central aisle to the wesbound platform.

And a westbound train of tne modernized 81-71M stock. There are few of them on line B so far, but they are going to gradually replace the 81-71 trains.