U Zlatého tygra, Prague

U Zlatého tygra is a protected historic house with a pub on Husova Street in Prague’s Old Town. The façade bears a house sign showing a walking tiger, commissioned by František Skořepa in nineteen thirty-five; the artist’s name is not known. Earlier, these rooms held a coffeehouse where Czech writers and poets gathered over periodicals.

From eighteen sixty-four, the premises have operated as a beerhouse associated with Pilsner Urquell. Bohumil Hrabal, a major Czech writer of the twentieth century, became its best-known regular, visiting almost every day during the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties and bringing the pub into his books. In January nineteen ninety-four, Václav Havel came here with Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright. That small tiger emblem marks a place where Prague’s literary life, beer culture, and political history meet.