Karlštejn, Žebrák & Zbiroh Castles: Bohemia Day Trip with Pilsner Urquell

Karlštejn was built between 1348 and 1365 by Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, King of Bohemia — the most powerful ruler in 14th-century Europe, who transformed Prague into an imperial capital and made Bohemia the political and cultural centre of the Holy Roman Empire. The castle was designed for a single purpose: to hold and protect the imperial crown jewels and sacred relics that Charles had accumulated throughout his reign — relics of the True Cross, the Crown of Thorns, and the imperial insignia. The architecture reflects this function: access to the holiest inner sanctum (the Chapel of the Holy Cross in the Great Tower) was restricted to the Emperor alone, or to those he specifically permitted. The Chapel of the Holy Cross is extraordinary — its walls are covered with 129 painted wooden panels depicting saints and angels by the Bohemian court painter Theodoric (1357–1367), a cycle that represents the most important surviving example of Gothic panel painting in central Europe. The interior can only be visited on a reserved guided tour (the Route 3 'Chapel of the Holy Cross' tour — book well in advance as numbers are strictly limited). The castle's exterior and the surrounding limestone valley are remarkable in their own right: Karlštejn sits on a limestone ridge above the Berounka River, accessible from Prague by local train to the village below.

Below the Bohemian karst plateau, a few kilometres south of Karlštejn, the Koněprusy Caves form the largest known cave system in Bohemia — approximately 2 kilometres of mapped passages through Devonian limestone (c.410 million years old) at three levels. The caves were used by humans since the Palaeolithic period; a medieval coin-forging workshop discovered inside the upper level of the cave system revealed that counterfeit coins were being manufactured here in the 15th century, using the cave's remote access and existing mineral deposits. The guided tour covers the main cave chambers — notable for stalactite, stalagmite, and helictite formations, including the Goat-Stalactite Chamber and the Pantheon — and includes the coin-forging workshop display. The cave maintains a constant temperature of approximately 9°C throughout the year; a warm layer is advisable regardless of outside temperature.

On two adjacent hilltops above the village of Točník, the ruined Gothic castles of Žebrák and Točník stand within sight of each other — a paired fortification site unique in the Czech Republic. Žebrák (whose name means 'beggar' — possibly ironic, given its royal associations) was built in the late 14th century as a hunting residence by Wenceslaus IV, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor. After Wenceslaus IV was deposed as Emperor in 1400 and held prisoner at Žebrák for a period, he found the castle sufficiently uncomfortable that he commissioned a new royal castle immediately opposite on the adjacent hill — Točník (begun 1395), which was completed in the early 15th century and became his preferred retreat. Both castles were abandoned after 1513 and passed into ruin; the Gothic fabric of Točník — the palace block, gateway, towers, and cistern — survives in substantially better condition than Žebrák. The ruins are accessible and the hilltop views over the Berounka River valley are among the finest in central Bohemia.

Zbiroh is a Renaissance château 20 kilometres south of Točník — a site that in the 20th century accumulated two entirely incompatible histories. Between 1910 and 1928, the Czech Art Nouveau painter Alfons Mucha rented a studio at Zbiroh and used it to paint his Slav Epic: a cycle of 20 enormous canvases (the largest exceeds 8 × 6 metres) depicting scenes from Slavic mythology and history, from the prehistoric Slavic settlement of central Europe to the introduction of Slavic literacy by Saints Cyril and Methodius to the abolition of serfdom in Russia. Mucha considered the Slav Epic the defining work of his life; it was completed in 1928 and donated to the city of Prague. The canvases are now displayed at the Veletržní Palace in Prague. After the Second World War, Zbiroh was repurposed as a military installation under the Czechoslovak communist government — a classified base whose precise function remains partially undisclosed. The château's exterior, formal gardens, and the studio spaces associated with Mucha are accessible to visitors.

The Pilsner Urquell brewery in Plzeň (Pilsen) is the site of one of the most consequential events in food and drink history: on 5 October 1842, brewmaster Josef Groll produced the first batch of a new style of beer — clear, golden, and effervescent — that would within decades become the most widely consumed beer style on earth. Before 1842, virtually all lager beer was dark; the combination of the local Bohemian Saaz hops, Pilsen's exceptionally soft water (among the softest of any major brewing city in Europe), and bottom-fermentation at near-freezing temperatures produced a beer so different from any existing style that it required a new name: Pilsner. The tour of the Pilsner Urquell brewery includes the underground limestone cellars — cold, dark passages where beer was lagered in oak barrels before refrigeration existed, at temperatures barely above freezing — and concludes with an unpasteurised beer tasting directly from the wooden barrel in the cellar. The unpasteurised Pilsner Urquell drawn directly from the barrel in the cellar is markedly different from the pasteurised product sold commercially worldwide: crisper, more complex, with a notable hop bitterness. It is available nowhere else.