U Zlatého tygra, Prague

The claim

The quintessential Prague Pilsner pub, loved by regulars who guard their tables fiercely. Writer Bohumil Hrabal held court here for decades, and in 1994 he drank with Václav Havel and Bill Clinton. The beer hall dates from 1816 in a medieval house, and the Pilsner Urquell, poured from cellar tanks, is among the best-kept in the city.

What the records show

The 1816 beer-hall date comes from the pub's own history and no independent record for it was found. Prague City Tourism's account of the house — Gothic, its tower raised in 1514, the walking-tiger relief in place since 1702, renamed At the Golden Tiger by Jan František Lehr in 1786 after being At the Black Lion from 1523 — records a refreshment house here in 1835, Šoch's café, whose regulars included Tyl, Mácha and Sabina. Czech Radio, writing in 2007, put the pub's age at over 150 years, which fits a mid-19th-century start better than 1816. Two Czech publishers were read on 18 September 2026 through the National Library's digital library, and both describe this house without mentioning 1816. František Ruth's topographical chronicle of royal Prague, published in 1903 and 1904, takes the Husova street house by house and gives number 228, with the orientation number 17, as the house at the Golden Tiger — called at the digger in 1429, when it belonged to a cutler named Hanuš. Šoch's café, he writes, was here in the 1840s, and Tyl and Filípek were among those who came. The Prague daily Pokrok of 4 April 1877, recalling the years before 1848, names the same café in the same house, prints its conscription number as 228 in the Old Town, and tells its readers what stood there as they read: a Pilsner beer hall. So a drinking house of exactly the present kind is on record at this address in 1877, from a publisher with no interest in the claim, and the two Czech accounts put the café a decade later than Prague City Tourism does — in the 1840s rather than 1835. Neither dates the tiger over the door. The Czech heritage registers were tried again the same night by four routes and none of them answered, so the state listing this house is recorded as holding is still not something a reader can be shown.

Dated evidence for U Zlatého tygra, earliest first
Year	What	Source
1816	Claimed founding	The pub
c.1713	Present building	Building fabric
1835	First record of a drinking house here	Czech National Library

What to look for inside

Bohumil Hrabal's regular pub
Beer hall documented from 1816
Visited by Bill Clinton and Václav Havel in 1994
Famous for beer cheese (pivní sýr)

Visiting

U Zlatého tygra is in Prague, Czechia, at Husova 17, 110 00 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.

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