Plzen Audio Tours

In 1842, a Bavarian brewer named Josef Groll combined the famously soft local water, Bohemian Saaz hops, and a new bottom-fermenting yeast to produce the world's first pale lager in Plzen. It was so different from every other beer that its style took the city's name: pilsner. The Pilsner Urquell Brewery still operates on the same site, now part of the global drinks industry but still running the original underground cellars where the beer was first lagered in sandstone vaults beneath the city.

Plzen is not only a brewing city.

The Great Synagogue on Sady Petatricatnikuu is the third-largest synagogue in the world, built in Moorish Revival style between 1888 and 1893, a testament to the size and prosperity of the city's Jewish community before the 20th century. The Cathedral of Saint Bartholomew in the main square has the tallest church tower in Bohemia at 102 meters. And the Skoda Works, founded in 1859, made Plzen one of the most important industrial cities in Central Europe, a fact that made it a significant Allied bombing target and eventually one of the last Czech cities liberated, by American forces under General Patton in May 1945.