Karlovy Vary

People lived near the springs long before the town: a Bronze Age fortified settlement has been found in Drahovice, and German settlers came to the region as craftsmen and miners from the late 12th century, so the town grew up German-speaking. A small spa settlement was founded most likely around 1349. Legend says that Charles IV, staying at Loket, found a hot spring while hunting in the surrounding forests and healed his injured leg in its water; he founded a spa on the site, later named Karlsbad — "Charles' Baths" — after him, and granted the town privileges on 14 August 1370.

In 1819 a conference here produced the Carlsbad Decrees, Metternich's anti-liberal censorship for the German Confederation. Writings by physicians such as David Becher and Josef von Löschner made the town a leading spa, and the railway from Prague to Cheb in 1870 brought still more guests: from 134 families in the 1756 season to 26,000 guests a year by the end of the 19th century and a record of 70,956 in 1911. Peter the Great, Goethe, Beethoven, Chopin and his parents, and Turgenev were among them.

The First World War ended the boom. In 1918 the German-speaking town became part of Czechoslovakia, and in March 1919 six demonstrators were killed by Czech troops. In 1930 most of its 23,901 inhabitants were Germans. Annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, the town had a Gestapo prison during the war, and after 1945 most German-speaking residents were expelled. After 1989 the spa buildings were restored, Russian guests and investors arrived, and in 2021 the town joined the Great Spa Towns of Europe World Heritage Site.

The spa ritual shapes the town. Over 80 springs rise here, 16 of them for drinking, all from the same source in the tectonically active Eger Graben and sharing the same dissolved minerals. Guests walk from colonnade to colonnade drinking from the springs, many following a course of drinking cures, and the colonnades themselves — the hot-spring hall of 1975, the cast-iron Park Colonnade, the carved wooden Market Colonnade, the great Mill Colonnade — are the town's public living rooms.

Film is the other great tradition. The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, one of the oldest in the world, takes over the town every July; in 2022 it hosted parts of the Odesa festival, and in 2026 it marked its 80th anniversary with a drone show of 1,300 drones in place of the usual fireworks. The town has also been a film location, standing in for Montenegro in Casino Royale in 2006.

The roll of famous guests is long — Peter the Great in 1711, Goethe, who wrote on local geology, Beethoven, who gave a concert here in 1812, and Atatürk in 1918 — and English visitors paid for the Methodist church of St Luke. The Orthodox church of St Peter and St Paul, the largest in the country, reflects the town's long ties with Russian guests. Ice hockey and volleyball clubs play in the top tiers.

About 49,000 people live in Karlovy Vary, with about 138,000 in the wider area linked by commuting, and the population is older than average: a quarter are over 65. In the 2021 census 11.6 per cent held foreign citizenship, the largest groups Ukrainian, Russian and Vietnamese, and in 2017 the Karlovy Vary region had the highest share of foreign residents in the country after Prague.

The economy is built on services, spa care and tourism, with small and medium-sized industry. Food and drink lead manufacturing: Mattoni 1873, which bottles mineral water, is the largest industrial employer, Becherovka has been made here since 1807, and the spa wafers originated here too. Glass and porcelain also matter, above all Moser, the luxury glassmaker founded in 1857.

The town is the regional capital, and its life divides between the spa valley, where visitors and spa guests walk the colonnades, and the newer town on the Ohře and the residential districts on the flatter land of the Sokolov Basin to the north. The Rolava reservoir in the middle of the city is used for recreation. Local buses and funiculars connect the hills with the centre, and the D6 motorway and railways run towards Prague, Cheb and Germany.

Karlovy Vary is known for three products. Spa wafers, Karlovarské oplatky, which originated here, are sold at street stands in town and in grocery stores across the country. Becherovka, formerly Karlsbader Becherbitter, is a herbal bitters made since 1807 from a secret recipe of more than twenty herbs and spices, often described as tasting of ginger or cinnamon, 38 per cent alcohol and usually served chilled as a digestif. The town also gave its name to Carlsbad plums, candied stuffed prunes.

Then there is the water. The springs themselves are drunk warm from the colonnades as part of the cure, and bottled mineral water from Mattoni is one of the town's biggest industries. Restaurants serve Czech cooking: bread dumplings, knedlíky, steamed and sliced like bread, with most main dishes; roast duck with dumplings and braised red cabbage; and guláš, a stew of beef, pork or game with onions and spices.

Cafés and restaurants line Stará louka and the river through the spa quarter, some with outdoor seating, and some places on the river charge twice the price of those a short way off it. The lookout restaurant at Diana serves Czech dishes, and the newer town on the Ohře has ordinary pubs and restaurants used by residents.