North & East Bohemia

Northern Bohemia was settled early: legend puts the arrival of the forefather Čech on the hill of Říp near Roudnice. Royal towns such as Litoměřice and Hradec Králové rose in the 13th century, when kings invited German settlers to clear the forests of the border hills, and Hradec later became the dowry town of Bohemia's queens. In the Thirty Years' War Albrecht von Wallenstein ruled a duchy of his own from Jičín.

Joseph II built the fortresses of Terezín and Josefov in the 1780s against Prussia, and in 1866 the Prussians decisively defeated Austria near Hradec Králové, at the battle of Königgrätz. The 19th century made the north one of the most industrial parts of the empire: textiles in Liberec, glass and jewellery around Jablonec, brown coal and chemicals around Ústí and Most, and railways along the Elbe.

The borderlands were largely German-speaking, and Liberec became the capital of the Nazi Reichsgau Sudetenland in 1939. Terezín became a ghetto and transit camp through which about 140,000 Jews passed, many to their deaths. After 1945 the Germans were expelled, and under communism open-cast coal mining destroyed dozens of villages and the old town of Most, whose Gothic church was moved on rails to save it, while acid rain killed forests in the mountains. Since the 1990s the air has cleared and the mines have begun to close.

The region is a patchwork. The north-western coal basin was resettled after 1945 by Czechs, Slovaks and Roma from elsewhere, so its towns have a younger, less rooted identity. The Liberec and Jablonec area keeps its glass-making and costume jewellery crafts, and the Krkonoše mountain villages keep the legend of Krakonoš, the bearded spirit of the mountains, along with timber cottages and old mountain chalets.

The east is older and more settled. Hradec Králové calls itself the "salon of the republic" for its interwar modernist architecture by Jan Kotěra and Josef Gočár, and Litomyšl and the Náchod area are closely tied to 19th-century Czech culture: Smetana was born in Litomyšl, and Božena Němcová set her novel Babička in the valley at Ratibořice.

Pardubice is horse country, home of the Velká pardubická steeplechase since 1874, and the national stud at Kladruby nad Labem breeds the white Kladruber carriage horses. Litoměřice has been a Catholic bishopric since the 17th century, though the region as a whole is among the least religious parts of Czechia.

About 2.3 million people live across the four regions. Liberec, Ústí nad Labem, Hradec Králové and Pardubice each have roughly 90,000 to 105,000 inhabitants; Most, Teplice, Děčín, Chomutov, Jablonec nad Nisou and Trutnov are the next tier, and Litoměřice has about 24,000.

Economies differ sharply. The Ústí Region has long had some of the highest unemployment in the country, a legacy of mining decline, and struggling towns have concentrations of poor housing. Liberec and Jablonec combine car-parts factories, glass, jewellery and a technical university. Hradec Králové and Pardubice are prosperous, with universities, hospitals, electronics and chemicals, including the Semtín plant near Pardubice that makes Semtex.

Life follows the national rhythm: early starts, a hot lunch and the pub or the cottage. Mountain towns revolve around the ski and hiking seasons, and many people commute across the borders to Germany and Poland, which are close in this part of the country.

Pardubice is known for perník, a spiced gingerbread, often decorated with white icing, and Hořice for trubičky, crisp rolled wafers filled with whipped cream or other creams. In the Krkonoše the traditional dish is kyselo, a sour soup of fermented rye sourdough with mushrooms and potatoes, and mountain chalets serve hearty dumplings and cabbage for skiers.

The Žatec area on the Ohře is the source of Saaz hops, the aromatic hops used in Czech lagers, and the town and its hop landscape are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Regional breweries include Svijany near Liberec and Krakonoš in Trutnov. The Elbe valley around Litoměřice is one of Europe's northernmost wine areas, making white wines such as Riesling and Müller-Thurgau around Velké Žernoseky and on the slopes of the České středohoří.

The Elbe lowlands grow fruit, vegetables and grain; apples and cherries from the Litoměřice area, known as the "garden of Bohemia", are sold at roadside stalls in summer. Fruit dumplings, fish from the ponds of the Pardubice area and game from the border forests complete the country cooking.

In the north-west, Bohemian Switzerland National Park has Pravčická brána and the boat trips through the Kamenice gorges at Hřensko, with Děčín castle above the Elbe nearby. Upriver, Litoměřice has a large square with a Renaissance town hall and Baroque churches, close to the Terezín memorial, the hill of Říp and the volcanic cones of the České středohoří. Žatec, its hop museum and the brown-coal basin at Most lie further west.

Liberec has a neo-Renaissance town hall and the Ještěd tower above it, while the Jizera Mountains, the glass town of Jablonec and the castles of Český ráj, from Trosky and Hrubá Skála to the Prachov rocks near Jičín, are within reach. The Krkonoše rise to Sněžka, at about 1,600 metres the highest point in Czechia, with the resorts of Špindlerův Mlýn and Pec pod Sněžkou and the source of the Elbe on the ridge. To the east are the Adršpach-Teplice rocks.

Hradec Králové has its Gothic cathedral, White Tower and modernist centre, and the Baroque hospital at Kuks with Matthias Braun's statues lies to the north. Pardubice has its château and the castle of Kunětická hora on a hill outside the city. Further south-east, Litomyšl's château and the Kladruby stud farm are both UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and the Orlické hory run along the Polish border.