Why visitors to Prague should drink in a traditional pub

Prague is synonymous with pubs – but for the real thing, travellers should venture away from its touristy centre and seek out an old-school "hospoda".

My wife and I were sipping beers at a pub in Prague's Žižkov district when the bartender plopped two foamy pints of pilsner in front of us. We hadn't ordered them. We weren't even finished with the ones we were drinking. "Oh, we're in one of these pubs" I said, quickly covering my pint with a cardboard coaster. "When you've had enough, just do this."

Most visitors to Prague are likely to linger in its Old Town Square, marvelling at its Gothic and Baroque splendour. They'll zigzag through the narrow cobblestone streets to the 14th-Century Charles Bridge and then trudge up to Prague Castle.

Everyone should do this on a visit to Prague. But if you only explore its tourist-mobbed centre, as many people do, you'll miss out on one of the most quintessentially Czech cultural experiences: whiling away a few hours in a real Czech pub, where the beer only stops coming if you know the code.

A city synonymous with beer

It's no secret that Czechs love beer. After all, they drink nearly 150 litres of it per capita every year, making the Czech Republic the top beer-consuming nation in the world. Prague itself boasts the most pubs per person of anywhere on the planet.

David Farley is a food and travel writer who lived in Prague for three years and regularly writes articles for the BBC, The New York Times, The Guardian and other publications. He has probably spent a year or two of his life in Czech pubs.

But just as most New Yorkers don't dine in Times Square and most Londoners don't eat in Piccadilly Circus, you'll rarely find Praguers drinking in Old Town, where bars cater largely to outsiders.

Instead, to really get under the skin of Czech culture, you should venture to one of Prague's most atmospheric areas: Žižkov (pronounced Zheezh-kof), a gritty, working-class neighbourhood that has long had a proud reputation for its salt-of-the-earth pubs, and where the bartender's job is to make sure your glass is never empty.

Home to hilly cobblestone streets and graffiti-tagged 19th-Century blocks of flats, Žižkov is home to classic pubs such as U Vystřelenýho Oka and U Slovanské Lípy. Despite its relative proximity to the centre of town – tram number 9 will get you there in about 20 minutes – you won't find a lot of guidebook-clutching tourists wandering around.

"If you want to understand Czech pub culture, it's hard to find a better place than Žižkov," said Martin Havlin, co-founder of Prague Craft Beer Tours and a born-and-bred Žižkov denizen. "The big difference is that pubs in Žižkov are still mainly for locals. Nobody is trying too hard to look 'authentically Czech' for tourists. You'll find people having a beer after work, old guys at the same table they've probably occupied for 30 years, and a tapster who already knows what half the room is drinking."

Žižkov's traditional Czech pubs, called hospoda, are one of the few places where people from all walks of Czech society mix........

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