Beroun

A settlement called Na Brodě, "by the ford", was recorded here in 1088. In 1265 King Ottokar II chose the site, on the shortest and easiest route between Prague and Plzeň, for a new town first named Verona — perhaps after merchants from the Italian city, though nobody is sure why. The name drifted through Berona and Beraun to Beroun. Wenceslas II resettled and enlarged the town in 1295, laying out the core that survives today and founding a Dominican convent, and in 1303 he made Beroun a royal town. It prospered under Charles IV.

In 1421 Hussite forces under Jan Žižka stormed the town and demolished the convent; the town was retaken and devastated after the Battle of Lipany, but has remained mainly Czech ever since. It reached its greatest prosperity under King Vladislaus II, before the Habsburgs seized its estates after 1526. The Thirty Years' War brought sackings by Imperial, Saxon and Swedish armies, and French and Bavarian troops followed in the First Silesian War. Beroun became a garrison town and recovered only in the 1860s, when limestone quarries, iron ore mines, ironworks and textile mills brought new growth.

Communist rule changed the town sharply. Heavy industry expanded, and housing quotas were met by demolishing medieval buildings in the cramped valley and putting up prefabricated tower blocks; in the 1980s the D5 motorway was carried over the town on a bridge. Since the fall of communism medieval buildings have been restored, the walls conserved and heavy industry has left, and in the 21st century Beroun has become a popular place to live, with fast population growth.

The bear is Beroun's emblem. A brown bear walks beneath the portcullis on the town's coat of arms, one story derives the name from the German word for bear, and the town keeps a bear in an enclosure on Městská hora — originally cubs known from Czech children's bedtime television — which remains a favourite family walk. The local ice hockey club is called the Bears.

Music has a strong place. The international music festival Talich's Beroun has been held every year since 1983, named after Václav Talich, the conductor who lived and died in the town. Since 2005 the Berounské Letorosty festival has filled the end of summer, and the pottery markets held every year in the town are of national importance.

The Museum of the Bohemian Karst on the main square reflects another part of local identity: the limestone landscape around the town, its caves and its fossils; at Klonk, just south of the town, a rock face serves as a world reference point for geologists. Marked paths leave the town for Městská hora, Děd hill and the Karst, and the surrounding countryside offers cycling, inline skating and walks. Sport is local and amateur: hockey, ball hockey, football, rowing and swimming clubs all have their home here.

About 22,000 people live in Beroun, across seven municipal parts, and the town forms one built-up area with Králův Dvůr, which was part of Beroun until 1990. Its quality of environment and health care are above the national average, and the population has grown quickly this century.

The largest employer is Tipsport, the biggest betting company in the country, with more than 1,000 staff. Industry continues on a smaller scale than under communism, with manufacturers of air-conditioning equipment and fibre-cement building materials among the main employers.

The town is a rail junction for lines towards Prague, Plzeň, České Budějovice, Rakovník and Blatná, and the D5 motorway, part of the route from Prague to Nuremberg, crosses above it. The town has a cinema, a few museums, sports clubs and a swimming pool, and its centre is quiet at weekends. Communist-era tower blocks and the motorway bridge still mark the townscape beside the restored medieval streets.

Beroun eats in the Central Bohemian tradition. Bread dumplings, knedlíky, steamed and sliced like bread, accompany most main dishes; roast duck comes with dumplings and braised red cabbage; and guláš, a stew of beef, pork or game with onions and spices, is eaten with dumplings or bread. Goulash soup, gulášovka, broths with liver dumplings and klobása, the smoked sausage, are pub staples.

Brewing has deep roots here. Before the Second World War the town had a burghers' brewery alongside its sugar refinery, mills and factories, and today the family-run Berounský medvěd brewery, brews and serves its own beer in a large restaurant hidden in the grounds of the old sugar factory near the main station.

Most other places to eat are on the main square and along the river. Food has a place in the town's industrial past too: a 1932 list of Beroun's businesses included a sugar refinery, mills, a pasta factory and a factory making bakery machines, alongside the burghers' brewery.