The claim
A rambling Old Town beer hall where Budvar has flowed for generations and a tiny in-house brewery revives the 15th-century brewing tradition of the house. Brewing is recorded here from 1466. Under a Gothic timber ceiling locals and visitors share long tables, and the adventurous can try X-Beer 33, one of the strongest lagers in the world.
What the records show
The house is documented in writing from 1404, but that entry names the house of the late Pavel Hubený and has nothing to do with drink: between about 1410 and 1433 his relatives, one of them Nicolaus the soap-boiler, appear to have boiled soap in it. Malt arrives in 1433, when Mikuláš the maltster bought the house and with it, probably, the right to brew, and from 1438 Jakub Starostka brewed here. Jan Nedvídek, who gave the house its name, founded in 1466 the brewery that ran without a break until 1898, when the Old Town brewing houses gave up against the new industrial breweries. The house became a large beer hall, the state took it in the 1950s, and after restitution the bar was enlarged, a hotel built in the Gothic roof and a microbrewery started — the smallest in the country, at 300 hectolitres a year. Who carries the 1438 is worth saying plainly: Czech Wikipedia, in an account of the house that gives no footnote for that year and works from Tomek’s nineteenth-century topography of the Old Town and Ruth’s chronicle of Prague. No archive entry for it has been read here.
| Year | What | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1466 | Claimed founding | The pub |
| c.1614 | Present building | Date cut into the stone portal beside the house sign of two bears |
| 1438 | First record of a drinking house here | Czech Wikipedia, on Jakub Starostka brewing here from 1438 |
What to look for inside
- Brewery founded by Jan Nedwídek in 1466, whom the brewing trade records as Medvídek
- Brewing ran without a break from 1466 to 1898
- The present microbrewery's first brew was on 17 November 2004
- House microbrewery makes X-Beer 33
- Budweiser Budvar tanked beer in the main hall
Visiting
U Medvídků is in Prague, Czechia, at Na Perštýně 7, 100 01 Praha 1 – Staré Město. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.
Sources
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_Medvídků
- www.umedvidku.cz/
- dbpedia.org/page/U_Medvídků
- cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_Medvídků
- ares.gov.cz/ekonomicke-subjekty?ico=25090780
- web.archive.org/web/20201206012209/http://www.pivovary.info/prehled/medvidci/medvidci.htm
Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Sept 2026
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