People visit Prague to see the monuments – this is a well-known fact. But few people realise that this does not just mean the Gothic or Renaissance castles, Baroque palaces, churches and other remarkable historic buildings, boasted by the centre of the metropolis and admired by hundreds of thousands of tourists.
Factory buildings, bridges, breweries and other jewels of industrial architecture also frequently display superb architecture. The Prague City Districts of Holešovice
(map) and Karlín
(map) are home to an especially plentiful number of industrial architectural monuments. These include the former Holešovice Brewery , the public warehouses and dock in Holešovice, Hlávkův Bridge , the Machine House boiler room , which was rebuilt into an administrative building or the former Rossemann & Kühnemann machine factory , which has been rebuilt to house the x8 DOX x8 gallery.
The Water Treatment Station in Podolí , which currently houses
the Prague Water Supply Museum, is also an important representative of industrial architecture.
The Czech Republic is part of the European Industrial Route, which was established with the support of the international European Route of Industrial Heritage association and leads through 32 countries.
For instance the industrial monuments of the Central Bohemian Region include the Škoda Auto Museum in Mladá Boleslav ,
the sugar refinery in Mělník and the lock and hydroelectricity generation plant in Nymburk .
You can find out more about unique buildings in the register maintained by the Research Centre for Industrial Heritage at the Czech Technical University in Prague (ČVUT).