West Bohemia & the Spa Towns

West Bohemia grew up on the route between Prague and the German lands. Cheb (Eger) was an imperial territory in its own right, and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa built a palace there in the 12th century; it was only pledged to the Bohemian crown in 1322. Plzeň was founded by King Wenceslas II in 1295 and stayed Catholic during the Hussite wars, withstanding Hussite sieges. In 1634 the imperial general Albrecht von Wallenstein was murdered in Cheb.

Silver made the Ore Mountains rich: the coins struck at Jáchymov from 1520, the Joachimsthalers, gave their name to the thaler and ultimately the dollar. The springs of Karlovy Vary, which tradition says Charles IV founded in the 14th century, drew visitors for centuries, and between the late 18th and early 19th centuries Františkovy Lázně and Mariánské Lázně were laid out as spa towns. By 1900 the three together formed a playground of European royalty, writers and composers, from Goethe to Edward VII.

Plzeň industrialised in the 19th century: its burghers' brewery first produced pilsner lager in 1842, and Emil Škoda built the Škoda Works into one of the empire's great arms makers. Most of the region spoke German until 1945, and after the Munich Agreement the borderlands were annexed to Germany. In May 1945 the US Army liberated Plzeň and western Bohemia; the German population was then expelled, and in the 1950s Jáchymov's uranium mines were worked by political prisoners in labour camps.

The spa culture sets the tone in the west. A cure means drinking mineral water at set times from a porcelain spa cup with a spout, walking the colonnades between springs and taking baths, mud or massage on a doctor's prescription, and many Czechs still go on health-insurance-funded stays. The towns keep a formal, slightly old-fashioned air, with concerts at the bandstands and promenades in the evening, and they have long drawn visitors from Germany and, until 2022, from Russia.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival each July is the main cultural event of the region. Plzeň, European Capital of Culture in 2015, is a working city proud of its beer and its liberation by the Americans, celebrated each May with parades of wartime vehicles.

South of Plzeň, the Chodsko area around Domažlice has one of the strongest folk traditions in Bohemia. The Chods guarded the border for the Bohemian kings in return for privileges, and their bagpipe music, costume and August festival are still alive. Much of the rest of the old German borderland was resettled after 1945, and its villages have a shorter local memory; some were never rebuilt.

Plzeň, with about 175,000 people, is the fourth-largest city in Czechia and the region's centre. The Karlovy Vary Region is one of the least populous in the country; Karlovy Vary itself has around 50,000 people, and Cheb and Sokolov are the other main towns.

Plzeň's economy rests on engineering and the successor companies of the Škoda Works, the Pilsner Urquell brewery, a university and suppliers to the car industry. The Karlovy Vary Region lives on spa tourism, glass and porcelain, and brown-coal mining around Sokolov, where old quarries are being flooded and reclaimed as lakes.

Days in the spa towns follow the rhythm of the cure: morning drinking rounds, treatments, lunch, rest and an afternoon walk. In Plzeň life is closer to the national pattern, with an early start, a hot lunch and the pub after work. Cross-border ties are strong, and many residents commute to jobs or shop across the Bavarian and Saxon borders.

Beer is the centre of the table in Plzeň. Pilsner Urquell, the original pale lager, is brewed there alongside the Gambrinus brand, and it is best drunk unpasteurised from the tank in the city's pubs, sometimes poured in the foam-heavy styles known as hladinka and šnyt. Pub dishes follow: goulash, roast pork and dumplings, and beer cheese mixed with onion and mustard.

The spa towns have their own specialities. Karlovarské oplatky are large, thin wafers filled with sweetened almond, hazelnut or vanilla layers, often eaten warm from the stall between drinks of spa water, and Becherovka, a bitter herbal liqueur made to a secret recipe since the early 19th century, is produced in Karlovy Vary. Mineral waters, including Mattoni, are bottled in the region.

Chodsko is known for its koláče, round yeast pastries filled with plum jam, poppy seed and sweet curd cheese. River fish such as trout and carp, game from the Slavkov Forest and mushroom dishes in autumn round out the country cooking.

The spa triangle forms part of the Great Spa Towns of Europe, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Karlovy Vary fills the Teplá valley with Belle Époque hotels: the Mill Colonnade, the Vřídlo hot spring spouting in its own hall, the Grandhotel Pupp and the Diana lookout tower above the town. Mariánské Lázně, higher and greener, is set around parks with the cast-iron colonnade and the Singing Fountain. Františkovy Lázně near Cheb is a compact town of yellow spa houses and pavilions.

Nearby are Cheb's imperial castle and Špalíček, the castle town of Loket on its loop of the Ohře, the Metternich château at Kynžvart, and Bečov nad Teplou, whose castle holds the reliquary of St Maurus. The Slavkov Forest between the spas is a protected landscape area. In the north, Jáchymov and the Ore Mountain Mining Region, a UNESCO site shared with Germany, lead up to Klínovec, the highest peak of the Ore Mountains.

Plzeň has the Pilsner Urquell brewery tour, St Bartholomew's Cathedral on the main square with the tallest church tower in the country, the Great Synagogue and a network of medieval cellars under the old town. Beyond the city are the Baroque abbey at Kladruby, Domažlice and Chodsko, the Jesuit catacombs at Klatovy and the Šumava forests around Železná Ruda.