City walls of Beroun

The medieval town walls of Beroun stand partly intact around the old centre. Built in the late 13th century under Václav II, the six-to-nine-metre-high ramparts once stretched for more than two kilometres. Their two-metre thickness was reinforced by thirty-seven open-backed bastions, twenty of which survive, and a deep water-filled ditch up to eight metres deep and seventeen metres wide.

The surviving gates show how the defences worked. Plzeňská brána in the west was the main lookout post, with a trumpeter’s heated chamber above the vaulted passage. After a 1735 fire it was rebuilt in Baroque style, adding the present clock from the late 19th century. Pražská brána in the east faced the ford to Prague and was the target of Jan Žižka’s 1421 attack during the Hussite wars.

A walk along the southern stretch of wall offers the clearest view of the defences. The brickwork shows the local sandstone quarried within two kilometres of the town. Inside the Plzeňská gate, rooms now house displays by the Bohemian Karst Museum, linking the walls to the region’s geology.