History

Prague, 1556 A.D. The emperor Ferdinand I. calls The Order of The Society of Jesus to Bohemia. The same year a grammar school, the oldest school in the Czech Republic these days, is established in the Clementinum, home of the Jesuit college.
 
In spite of the fact that the grammar school was a result of both the recatholicization and anti-Czech Hapsburg policy as well (90 % of the population were non-catholic), from the very beginning it became an educational establishment and the workplace for a number of prominent personalities in our country and sustained its Czech character for the course of its existence. Its students, schoolmasters and headmasters were e. g. Bohuslav Balbín, Josef Jungmann, Václav Kliment Klicpera, Josef Kajetán Tyl, František Ladislav Rieger, Bedřich Smetana, Josef Václav Frič, Vítězslav Hálek, Miroslav Tyrš, Jan Neruda, Josef Svatopluk Machar, František Xaver Šalda, Zikmund Winter, Karel Čapek and many others.
 
The attribute “academic“ in the name of the school reflects the reality that our establishment was formed from lower forms of the Jesuit University - Academy. Moreover, it evokes the historical privilege of the enrolment of the students from the final forms in Prague University. After the February coup d´état in 1948 the grammar school lost its title consecrated by centuries to turn into an eleven-year (from 1953) and later (1960) twelve-year comprehensive secondary school. The introduction of specialized forms that were taught Latin and Greek and an experimental renewal of the eight-year grammar school in 1968 were a harbinger of better times. The August occupation with the Normalization that followed, however, brought about the abolition of the lower forms. The grammar school could not officially ask for its historical name until after the Velvet Revolution - in 1990.