Příbram

Příbram is a town in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic, about 46 kilometres southwest of Prague on the Litavka River at the edge of the Brdy Highlands. With roughly 33,000 inhabitants it is the third largest town of its region after Kladno and Mladá Boleslav, and it serves as the administrative and cultural centre of the region's southwestern part. The name comes from the personal name Heinricus Pribrami and originally meant Pribrami's court. The first written record dates from 1216, when the nobleman Hroznata of Teplá sold the settlement to the bishop of Prague; it was raised to a town in 1497 and made a royal mining town by Emperor Rudolf II in 1579. Silver mining shaped the place: in the eighteenth century it was the most profitable silver mining centre of the Habsburg monarchy and later the seat of a mining academy. The Svatá Hora pilgrimage site above the town is the oldest and most important Marian pilgrimage place in Bohemia, and the Mining Museum Příbram preserves the mining past.