Liberec

Liberec grew from two settlements on the trade route from Bohemia into Lusatia: Habersdorf, founded in the 11th or 12th century by Czech settlers and German colonists, and Reichenberg, established nearby in the 13th century. They merged, and Reichenberg is first named in writing in 1352. The town was burned in 1469 during a battle with the army of King George of Poděbrady, and after 1558 the Redern family developed it and laid the foundations of its textile industry. Emperor Rudolf II made it a town in 1577. After 1620 it passed to Albrecht von Wallenstein and then to the Gallas and Clam-Gallas families.

The 18th century brought prosperity: the population tripled and the cloth trade boomed. In the 19th century Reichenberg became the centre of the textile industry for all of Austria-Hungary, the "Manchester of Bohemia", where Johann Liebieg built a textile empire, and in the 1850s it was the second-largest city in Bohemia. In the late 19th century it built its neo-Renaissance City Hall, theatre and museum, a villa district, a zoo and a botanical garden.

It was the most populous German-speaking town in the Bohemian lands. In 1918 it was briefly declared the capital of the German-Austrian province of German Bohemia before Czechoslovak troops entered on 16 December. The Great Depression fed support for Konrad Henlein's Sudeten German Party; the Munich Agreement gave the city to Nazi Germany in 1938, it became capital of the Reichsgau Sudetenland in 1939, most Czech and Jewish residents fled or were expelled, and the synagogue was burned. After 1945 nearly all the German population was expelled and the city was resettled by Czechs. The communist era added a technical university in 1953 and the Ještěd Tower in 1966–1973.

The Ještěd Tower is the city's emblem. Karel Hubáček's hyperboloid of reinforced concrete, designed to extend the silhouette of the mountain and resist its weather, won the Perret Prize of the International Union of Architects in 1969 and later a poll for the most important Czech building of the 20th century; in February 2026 the Liberec Region Council approved buying the hotel and transmitter from their operator. Liberec has been more careless with other modern buildings: Hubáček's honeycomb-shaped Ještěd department store was demolished in 2009 despite protests from architects.

The neo-Renaissance core keeps the confidence of the textile era, from the City Hall to the F. X. Šalda Theatre, whose curtain was painted by Gustav and Ernst Klimt and Franz von Matsch. The city hosts Anifilm, an international festival of animated film, and Mateřinka, a puppet festival for small children. David Černý's Feast of Giants bus stop serves up the city's difficult past — German and Czech beer mugs, a fallen menorah and Henlein's head on a plate — and a new synagogue has stood since 2000 on the site of the one burned in 1938.

Sport runs deep. Slovan Liberec has won three national football titles, Bílí Tygři play top-flight ice hockey, the Ski Jumping World Cup visits every January, and the city hosted the Nordic World Ski Championships in 2009.

About 108,000 people live in Liberec, the fifth-largest city in Czechia, and about 227,000 in the wider Liberec–Jablonec agglomeration, which has grown together since the late 19th century and is linked by an interurban tram line. The city is divided into 33 municipal parts, among them the self-governing borough of Vratislavice nad Nisou.

The textile mills that built the city have largely gone; Centrum Babylon, an entertainment complex, occupies one former factory. The economy now rests on manufacturing, on glass and jewellery in nearby Jablonec, and on the Technical University of Liberec, which has about 9,000 students and is known especially for textile engineering research; it also has an institute for nanomaterials. In Vratislavice the brewery and the carpet factory remain the most important industries.

Life has a mountain rhythm. The trams carry walkers and skiers to Horní Hanychov, and the Jizera Mountains, with their cross-country ski trails, are a short ride away. The Ještěd cable car, opened in 1933, has been closed indefinitely since a fatal accident in 2021.

Liberec eats the Czech staples. Roast pork with bread dumplings and sauerkraut, known as vepřo-knedlo-zelo, is often considered the most typical Czech dish; svíčková is marinated beef in a thick sauce of carrot, parsley root, celeriac and sometimes cream, served with dumplings, cranberry compote and a slice of lemon; and guláš is a stew of beef, pork or game with onions and spices. Pubs serve snacks such as utopenci, spicy pickled sausages in a sweet-sour vinegar marinade, and nakládaný hermelín, a soft cheese similar to Camembert.

Beer is local. The brewery in Vratislavice nad Nisou, founded in 1872 and famous for its beer, closed in 1998 and was revived in 2004 under the Konrád name, and Svijany, one of the oldest Czech breweries, established in 1564, brews unpasteurised lagers in a village near Liberec. Neighbouring Jablonec and the wider region share the Czech love of koláče, yeast pastries filled with fruit, poppy seed or sweet curd cheese.

Kavárna Pošta on the main square is a Viennese-style café, and the streets around the City Hall also have pizza, Indian and Nepalese restaurants and a Scandinavian-style café with its own bakery.