AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Strženka — known to local anglers as Hádek — is a small, beautifully kept fishing and recreation pond tucked into pine forest on the northern edge of Plzeň, on the cadastre of the village of Chotíkov. It is the first link in the famous Bolevecká rybniční soustava (the Bolevec pond system), a chain of medieval ponds fed by the Bolevecký potok stream that runs down past Bolevec to the Berounka river.↗↗
The pond's name is a small piece of local history: the original 15th-century pond burst its dam in a flood and was lost for some 200 years, earning the name meaning "the breached one" before the fishing club rebuilt it in 1949–1950. Today it is a tranquil, forest-ringed pool with clean water, walking around the dam, and a quieter nature reserve along its shore — a gentle green escape just minutes from the city rather than a big-ticket sight.↗↗
What makes it interesting
Strženka sits at the very head of the Bolevec pond system, an unusually old and ambitious landscape work begun by the city of Plzeň in the mid-15th century — a late-Gothic feat of water management that, in places, predates the more celebrated pond complex at Třeboň. Over the centuries the chain grew to as many as thirteen ponds along the Bolevecký potok and its tributaries; Strženka is generally counted as the first and northernmost of the survivors.
