Plzeň

A castle stood at what is now Starý Plzenec by 976, but the city itself was founded nearby in 1295 by King Wenceslaus II as New Plzeň, and the older settlement took the name Starý Plzenec. The new town lay on the trade routes from Bohemia to Nuremberg and Regensburg; brewing is first recorded in 1307, and by the 14th century Plzeň was the third-largest town in Bohemia after Prague and Kutná Hora. It stayed Catholic during the Hussite Wars, when Prokop the Great besieged it three times without success, and in 1476 the first printing press in Bohemia produced its first book here.

Emperor Rudolf II made the city his seat in 1599–1600. In the Thirty Years' War Mansfeld's troops took it in 1618, and Wallenstein wintered here in 1633 before fleeing to Cheb, where he was killed. The great change came in the 19th century. In 1842 the new burghers' brewery, under the Bavarian brewer Josef Groll, produced the first pale lager, and in 1869 Emil Škoda founded the engineering works that became a leading arms supplier to the Austro-Hungarian army and employed more than 30,000 people by 1917.

During the German occupation the Škoda Works made weapons for the Wehrmacht, and in January 1942 more than 2,000 of the city's Jews were deported to Terezín. Allied bombing in April 1945 caused heavy damage, and on 6 May 1945 General Patton's Third Army liberated the city. The German minority was expelled after the war. In June 1953 more than 20,000 people, mostly Škoda workers, protested against a currency reform in the Plzeň uprising. After 1989 the Škoda group was broken up, and in 2015 Plzeň was a European Capital of Culture.

Plzeň's identity rests on beer and on its liberation. The pilsner style, much copied, carries the city's name to beers brewed around the world, and the brewery is the most visited attraction in the region. Each May the Liberation Festival remembers the American arrival of 1945 with a convoy of wartime vehicles and visits from American and Belgian veterans.

The city has a strong puppet tradition: the puppeteers Josef Skupa and Gustav Nosek and the animator Jiří Trnka all worked here, and a puppet museum stands on the main square. The J. K. Tyl Theatre has opera, drama, musical, ballet and orchestral companies, with a Neo-Renaissance main house of 1899–1902 and the New Theatre opened in 2014. Apartment interiors by the architect Adolf Loos are among the city's well-known sights, and Plzeň was a European Capital of Culture in 2015.

Sport draws big crowds. FC Viktoria Plzeň, one of the most successful Czech football clubs, has played in the Champions League, and HC Škoda Plzeň plays in the top ice hockey league; there is also a speedway track. The surrounding region is staunchly Catholic by history, and St Bartholomew's has been a cathedral since the diocese was created in 1993.

Plzeň is the fourth-largest city in the country, and more than 300,000 people live in the wider agglomeration. The city produces about two-thirds of the Plzeň Region's output with less than a third of its people, and it is one of the most prosperous places in the Czech Republic; it came top among Czech cities in one international quality-of-life ranking in 2025, though only 61st of 206 in a national index the same year.

Engineering still matters. The successor companies of the Škoda Works, above all Škoda Transportation and Doosan Škoda Power, remain important, as do the Pilsner Urquell brewery and the liqueur maker Stock in Božkov; since the late 1990s foreign investment has grown fast. The University of West Bohemia, founded in 1991, has about 12,000 students, and Charles University has a medical faculty here.

Many people live in the housing estates built after the war, from Slovany and Doubravka to Bory, Lochotín and Bolevec, while former villages such as Božkov, Černice and Koterov keep their old farmhouses. Trams and trolleybuses carry commuters between the estates and the centre, and the D5 motorway puts Prague and Bavaria within easy reach. Summers are getting hotter: in August 2026 the city recorded 41.5°C, its highest temperature on record.

Plzeň drinks its own beer first. Pilsner Urquell was the world's first pale lager, brewed from pale malt, the city's very soft water, Saaz hops from nearby Žatec and Bavarian lagering, with triple decoction mashing. Unpasteurised tank beer is increasingly available, and a few pubs and the brewery serve it unfiltered. Gambrinus, from a company founded in 1869 and now brewed at the same brewery, is one of the most popular beers in the country.

The food that goes with it is Czech pub cooking. Pivní sýr, beer cheese, is a soft cheese mixed with raw onion and mustard and spread on toasted bread; utopenci, drowned men, are spicy sausages pickled in sweet-sour vinegar with onion and chilli; and nakládaný hermelín is a pickled soft cheese similar to Brie and Camembert. Main courses include goulash soup, svíčková, marinated beef with a thick vegetable sauce and bread dumplings, and vepřo-knedlo-zelo, roast pork with dumplings and cabbage, often called the most typical Czech dish.

Two other drinks come from the city's edges. Fernet Stock, made in Božkov, has long been the best-selling herbal liqueur in the Czech Republic, and the small town of Starý Plzenec just to the south-east is known for its sparkling wine.