Explore Pilsen

Republic Square is the main square of Pilsen's old town, laid out with the town at the end of the 13th century and measuring 168 by 191 metres. The Cathedral of St. Bartholomew stands in its centre, surrounded by Gothic, Renaissance and later houses, the Renaissance Town Hall of 1559, a Marian plague column of 1681 and modern gilded fountains.

The Cathedral of St. Bartholomew is a Gothic church in the middle of Republic Square in Pilsen, begun after 1342 on a church site founded with the town around 1295; it became a cathedral in 1993. Its tower is 102 metres high and can be climbed, and the high altar holds the Pilsen Madonna, a stone statue from about 1380.

The Pilsner Urquell Brewery in Pilsen was founded by the town's burghers in 1839, and in 1842 the Bavarian brewer Josef Groll brewed the first pale lager there. Visitors enter through the Jubilee Gate of 1892, and the guided tour shows the historic and modern brewhouses, the bottling line and the old cellars where beer matures in oak barrels.

The Pilsen Historical Underground is a network of passages, cellars and wells dug beneath the old town of Pilsen from the late 13th century to the 18th century, with about 13 km of corridors. A guided tour of almost 800 metres starts in the Brewery Museum building on Veleslavínova street and ends at a 16th-century waterworks with a replica water wheel.

The Great Synagogue in Pilsen was completed in 1893 to a design by Emmanuel Klotz, who reworked an earlier Gothic plan by Max Fleischer and lowered its twin towers to 45 metres. Its facade mixes Romanesque and Moorish Revival forms around a large Star of David; restored in the 1990s, it still holds services and also hosts concerts and exhibitions.

Techmania Science Center is an interactive science centre in Pilsen, founded in 2005 by Škoda Transportation and the University of West Bohemia and opened in 2008 in former Škoda factory halls. Visitors try hands-on exhibits on physics, mathematics and technology, and watch films in its 3D planetarium.

Plzeň Zoo is the zoological and botanical garden of Pilsen, founded in 1926 and run together with the botanical garden opened in 1961. Its 21 hectares on a hillside north-west of the centre are laid out by continent, with houses for Madagascar and Australia, an African section, the Lüftnerka historic farmstead and a DinoPark.