Pint Passport

366 pubs checked in 33 countries

What is the oldest pub in the world?

The short answer

So which is the oldest pub in the world? There are two answers, and they are not the same pub.

Oldest claim

The Old Ferry Boat Inn

Holywell. Says AD 560, on tradition alone. The earliest document is 1841.

Grade C · Tradition

Oldest proof

Taverne zur Krone

Dietikon. A drinking house here is on record from 1259; the building is dated to about 1703.

Grade A · Documented

Every country has a pub that says it is the oldest, and almost none can show a document from the year on the sign. Of the 100 oldest claims we have checked, 6 have a record from at or near the date claimed. The rest rest on a building of the right age, or on a story.

That is not a scandal. Nobody kept a register of when ale started being sold in a house, and the documents that survive were written for tax and tenancy, not history. What we can do is show both dates for every pub, side by side, and say which is which. How we date a pub sets out the rules.

World map with 365 old pubs marked across 33 countries

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The best-documented pubs on earth

Ranked by the earliest year a document puts a drinking house on the site. This is the list almost nobody publishes, because the famous names are not on it.

  1. 1Taverne zur KroneDietikon, SwitzerlandOn record1259Claims1259Grade A
  2. 2Jaškovská krčmaTěrlicko, CzechiaOn record1268Claims1268Grade A
  3. 3Zum Roten BärenFreiburg im Breisgau, GermanyOn record1387Claims1120Grade B
  4. 4Bremer RatskellerBremen, GermanyOn record1405Claims1405Grade A

The oldest claims, in order

The top twelve of the Top 100, ordered by the date each one puts on its sign.

  1. The Old Ferry Boat Inn

    Grade C

    Holywell, England

    The AD 560 date is tradition only; no early documentary source has been published. The listed building is 17th-century with an older cross-wing, and a continuous run of named innkeepers is recorded only from 1841. The run of innkeepers is published by Capturing Cambridge, the Museum of Cambridge's house-by-house record of the county, which lists the household at the inn from 1841 - Thomas Metcalf, his wife Alice nee

    Claims AD 560; first recorded 1841.

  2. Ye Olde Fighting Cocks

    Grade C

    St Albans, England

    The 793 is the pub's own claim: its website says the original structure has been dated as far back as 793AD. Historic England notes the 793 date first appears on an early-20th-century postcard. Legal papers show the old pigeon house was rebuilt as the 'Round House' by 1622; the first firm record as an alehouse (the Three Pigeons) is 1756, and the Fighting Cocks name appears by 1806. The 1756 is the St Albans & Herts

    Claims AD 793; first recorded 1756.

  3. The White Lion Inn

    Grade C

    Llanelian-yn-Rhos, Wales

    The 1,200-year claim has been traced to one place only: a 2024 holiday-letting blog, which attributes it to the inn itself. North Wales Live gives late 14th to early 15th century. Cadw's full report, read on 17 September 2026, gives the only reading of the building by anybody with the building in front of them: the White Lion Public House, listed Grade II on 2 July 1998, is a second-quarter 19th-century inn with

    Claims AD 800; no early record found.

  4. Sean's Bar

    Grade C

    Athlone, Ireland

    The 900 AD founding by Luain is tradition with no archival support. The NIAH dates the building to c.1725 and describes the wattle partitions found in the 1970s as possibly 17th-century, not 10th-century; the inn is recorded as The Three Blackamoor Heads in 1738. Guinness World Records named it Ireland's oldest pub in 2004 but reportedly no longer keeps an oldest-pub category. The present trade is on the state's own

    Claims AD 900; first recorded 1738; building c.1725.

  6. The Porch House

    Grade C

    Stow-on-the-Wold, England

    The 947 is the house's own claim, though it has faded from its website: the current site says only 'England's oldest inn' and eleven centuries, while the history page archived in September 2020 gave the tradition that part of the building was a hospice built for Aethelmar, Duke of Cornwall in 947AD, quoting a local history published in 2000. The date rests on that tradition. The radiocarbon test usually cited in

    Claims AD 947; no early record found.

  7. The Bush Inn

    Grade C

    Morwenstow, England

    The pub cites hospitality from around 950 AD and a 13th-century building, and offers no documentation for either. Two searches on 12 September 2026 turned up nothing to support them and two blanks worth recording. Historic England's list holds 23 entries in Morwenstow parish - the church, six chest tombs, the vicarage, Tonacombe Manor, Hawker's hut, the ship's figurehead by the lych gate - and not the inn; the only

    Claims AD 950; no early record found.

  8. The Bingley Arms

    Grade C

    Bardsey, England

    Historic England's listing and its 2022 'oldest pub' blog find a mid-18th-century building with a 1738 datestone and no evidence for a 10th- or 11th-century inn; no pubs appear in Domesday. The 953 date is unsourced tradition. 1738 is a building date, not a documented licence.

    Claims AD 953; first recorded 1738; building c.1738.

  9. The Old Inn

    Grade C

    St Breward, England

    The 11th-century date, tied to monks building the nearby church, comes from the pub and from tourism lists; no documentary or architectural dating was found. The pub's own about page is more careful than the lists that repeat it: it says the middle bar and kitchens were built in the 11th century as lodging for the monks, that the house is believed to have begun trading as a public house in the 15th century, and that

    Claims 1000; no early record found.

  10. The Royal Oak

    Grade C

    Winchester, England

    The link with Queen Emma's residence in 1002 is legend. Local historians cite records of an unnamed taverner here between about 1390 and 1430 and a 1637 schedule naming a tapster with a brewhouse, which gives it one of the better documented medieval tavern histories in Hampshire. The year comes to this page from the Petersfield Post: a nostalgia column of September 2018 on the two Hampshire inns that each claim to

    Claims 1002; first recorded 1430; building c.1450.

  11. The Church House Inn

    Grade C

    Rattery, England

    The 1028 date, tied to monks or masons building the parish church, is tradition and is not repeated on the pub's own website. The standing building is described by CAMRA as a listed 16th-century church house.

    Claims 1028; no early record found.

  12. Klosterschenke Weltenburg

    Grade C

    Kelheim-Weltenburg, Germany

    The abbey advertises brewing since 1050, a date repeated by Wikipedia but resting on monastic tradition rather than a published charter; the date refers to the brewery, not to the present tavern. When the courtyard Klosterschenke first served the public is not documented in the sources checked.

    Claims 1050; no early record found.

  13. Old Swan Inn

    Grade C

    Llantwit Major, Wales

    Cadw's record 13260 was read in full on 20 September 2026 and settles two things that were open. It lists the house as Old Swan Inn PH at grade II*, designated on 16 December 1952, and dates it to the sixteenth century or the early seventeenth. The description is unusually full for a pub: squared limestone rubble under a Welsh slate roof, a three-light mullioned ground-floor window with arched heads and a dripstone

    Locally dated 1100; no early record found.
See all 100

Photo credits

Country by country

Common questions

What is the oldest pub in the world?
No pub can prove it, and the two honest answers are different. By claim it is The Old Ferry Boat Inn in Holywell, which says AD 560 and has no document to support it. By documentary evidence it is Taverne zur Krone in Dietikon, on record from 1259.
Why can no pub prove it is the oldest?
Because the records that would prove it were not kept for that purpose. Licensing rolls, rentals, court entries and deeds record who owed what to whom, not when a house started selling ale. A pub can usually show when its building went up and when someone was first taxed for selling drink in it — and those are different dates, often centuries apart.
Which country has the oldest pubs?
England has by far the most pubs claiming great age, and the most surviving medieval fabric in daily use as pubs. It also has the most disproved claims, because it has been studied hardest. Ireland, Germany, Czechia and the Netherlands all have serious contenders, and the German Gasthaus tradition produces some of the best-documented cases anywhere.
Is the Guinness World Record for the oldest pub still awarded?
No. Guinness World Records no longer maintains an oldest-pub category, and pubs that were recognised while it did may still say so. A withdrawn category is not the same as a disproved claim, but it is not evidence either.
How many of these claims hold up?
Of the 100 oldest claims we have checked, 6 have a record from at or near the date claimed, 11 have a building of the right age but a later first mention, and 83 rest on tradition alone.