Plzeň
"There is something almost sacramental about drinking Pilsner Urquell inside the brewery where it was born — the taste of a thing in its exact right place."
The Pilsner Urquell brewery is not subtle about what it is. The main gate on Veleslavínova Street is a triumphal arch of red brick, and the chimney visible above the surrounding buildings serves as navigation from most parts of Plzeň. I walked through that gate on a Wednesday morning with a group that included a Japanese couple, several Germans, and a pair of British men who had the focused expressions of people who had been thinking about this day for some time. The tour takes you through the entire production process, from the malting floors to the copper kettles to the underground sandstone cellars where the beer still ages in oak barrels. The cellars are cold, vaulted, dimly lit, and they smell of yeast and stone and beer that has been seeping into the walls for a hundred and eighty years. At the end of the tour, the guide fills glasses directly from an unpasteurised barrel, and you drink it standing in the cellar, and the difference in taste from the bottled version is immediate and not subtle.
That’s the famous version of Plzeň — the brewery, the pilsner origin story, the specific slightly bitter and hoppy flavour that has been copied ten thousand times worldwide without ever being quite reproduced. But the city around the brewery is worth the time independently. The main square — náměstí Republiky — is one of the largest medieval squares in the Czech Republic, and the Gothic Cathedral of Saint Bartholomew rises from its centre with a spire that held the record as the tallest church spire in Bohemia for centuries. The west portal has tympanum carvings of the last judgment in such detail that I spent twenty minutes outside the entrance before going in. Inside, the nave is narrow and very high, and the afternoon light that comes through the windows creates moving patches of colour on the pale stone floor.
Plzeň has a good and somewhat under-celebrated food scene. I ate at a restaurant in the old town that served svíčková in a version slightly richer and more complex than any I’d had elsewhere — the gravy dark and reduced, the cream sauce thickened with something I couldn’t identify that might have been sour cream or might have been time. I asked the waiter; he shrugged in the universal manner of people who have been asked this question more times than they care to count. There is also an excellent market on the main square on Wednesdays and Saturdays where I bought a slab of smoked cheese and ate it on a bench, which is not a distinguished meal but was exactly what I wanted at that moment.
The city’s Jewish quarter — now the Jewish Museum — is one of the best preserved and least-visited in Bohemia. The Great Synagogue, opened in 1893, is the third largest synagogue in the world and seats two thousand people. I was entirely alone inside it for about thirty minutes, which gave me a chance to absorb the Moorish Revival architecture — the horseshoe arches, the geometric tilework, the gilded decorations — without any distraction. It has the quality of very large spaces: the way they make sound behave differently, softer and more particular, as if the air itself is listening.
The Underground Plzeň tour takes you through the medieval tunnels beneath the city — over a kilometre of sandstone passageways originally used for storing food, beer, and occasionally people fleeing trouble above. The temperature underground is constant at eight degrees regardless of season, which makes the tour more interesting in summer and more bracing in winter. My guide had the slightly proprietorial manner of someone who genuinely loves the thing they’re showing you, and pointed out the carved initials of medieval citizens on the tunnel walls with the same enthusiasm another guide might reserve for a Vermeer.
When to go: Plzeň works in any season — the brewery and underground are year-round, the cathedral and square are most photogenic in morning light. The Pilsner Fest in late September is the obvious time for beer-focused visitors, crowded but genuinely festive. April through June and September offer the best balance of weather and manageable crowds.