Karlovy Vary's legend begins with an emperor's sore leg and a hot spring
According to legend, Charles IV's hunting party stumbled on a hot spring in the Bohemian forest, and its water healed the emperor's injured leg. The spa that grew there took his name, Charles' Baths, and became one of Europe's great resorts, now part of the UNESCO-listed Great Spa Towns of Europe.
Karlovy Vary, known in German as Karlsbad, lies about 106 kilometres west of Prague where the Tepla and Rolava rivers meet the Ohre. People lived nearby long before the spa, and German-speaking settlers, craftsmen and miners arrived from the late 12th century, so the town grew up German-speaking. The spa settlement was most likely founded around 1349, and Charles IV granted town privileges on 14 August 1370.
Its name reached the history books in 1819, when a conference there produced the Carlsbad Decrees, Metternich's measures imposing anti-liberal censorship across the German Confederation. Physicians' writings then helped turn it into a fashionable resort for aristocrats and celebrities, and a railway from Prague to Cheb in 1870 made it easier to reach. The 1756 season drew 134 families; by the end of the 19th century about 26,000 guests came each year, and 1911 set the record at 70,956 visitors.
The twentieth century was harsh. The First World War halted the boom, and in 1919 the largely German population protested being placed in the new Czechoslovakia; six demonstrators were killed by Czech troops. Under the Munich Agreement of 1938 Nazi Germany annexed the city, and after the Second World War most German speakers were expelled. Tourism only revived after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, when the spa buildings were restored.
No Czech spa draws more visitors today. The town of about 49,000 residents also hosts one of Europe's leading film festivals. Its products travel widely: Becherovka liqueur, made here since 1807, thin Carlsbad wafers dating from 1867, candied Carlsbad plums, and luxury glass from Moser, founded in 1857.
Source: Karlovy Vary
