Karlovy Vary
Thirteen springs rise through a narrow valley here at temperatures up to seventy-three degrees, and the cure has always been drunk rather than bathed in — from a flat porcelain cup with a hollow handle you sip through as you walk the colonnades. Come in low season, take the water at three or four fountains a day as prescribed, and ride the funicular up to the Diana tower for the whole gorge below.
Why go
The drinking cure, intact — thirteen springs, five colonnades, and a porcelain cup with a spout. A gorge full of Belle Époque — the town is one street wide and stacked with 1890s façades. The Grandhotel Pupp — 1701, and the reason the town looks the way it does. Bohemian glass and Becherovka — Moser has cut glass here since 1857; the herbal liqueur is a thirteenth spring, locals say.
The character
Karlovy Vary occupies a valley so narrow that the Teplá river runs under the main promenade, and thirteen springs surface along it at temperatures up to seventy-three degrees. Charles IV is said to have found them while hunting in the 1350s; by the eighteenth century the town was a European institution, and Peter the Great, Goethe, Beethoven, Chopin, Marx and Freud all took the cure.
What distinguishes it from western spa towns is that the water is drunk, not bathed in. Patients walk the colonnades sipping through the hollow handle of a flat porcelain cup, moving from spring to spring on a prescribed circuit — the temperature and mineral content differ at each, and a doctor sets the order. That ritual is still followed, largely by Czech and German patients on medical stays, alongside Russian visitors who have wintered here for a century and a half. The film festival each July gives the town a second identity, but the drinking cure is the constant.
Places of character
Mill Colonnade — Zítek's 1881 neo-Renaissance arcade with a hundred and twenty-four columns and five springs. Vřídlo (the Hot Spring) — a geyser shooting twelve metres in a modernist hall; the water is too hot to drink at source. Diana lookout — the funicular through the woods to a tower over the whole gorge. Moser glassworks — the factory tour and the museum; the glass has been cut here since 1857. Jan Becher Museum — the herbal liqueur invented in 1807 and treated locally as medicinal. Grandhotel Pupp — walk through the halls; the building has been receiving guests since 1701.
The way to do it
Buy the cup at any kiosk and use it — the ritual is the experience. Space the springs across the day as the signs advise rather than drinking everything at once. Walk uphill at least once: the town reads entirely differently from the Diana tower. And come outside the film festival unless the festival is the point.
One perfect day
Cup in hand at seven, walking the colonnades from spring to spring while the town is quiet and the water steams in the cold air. Breakfast, then the funicular to Diana for the gorge and a forest walk down. Late morning at Moser to watch glass being cut and blown. Lunch of Czech food somewhere unfashionable off the promenade. Afternoon in a thermal bath — the modern spa hotels admit day guests. Coffee and a wafer, which is the local ritual, then a slow walk back along the river as the façades light up, and dinner with Becherovka afterwards, medicinally.
Grand hotels
Grandhotel Pupp — 1701, five hundred rooms of Habsburg grandeur, and the model for the Grand Budapest Hotel. Hotel Imperial — 1912 on the hillside, built for wealthy patients with its own funicular from the town.
When to go
Best expression: May and September — colonnades comfortable, forests green, no festival crowd. Consider: early July for the film festival, when the town fills with Czech cinema and it becomes a different place. Avoid if possible: deep winter, when the gorge holds fog and the walks are icy.
The frame
Ideal stay 2 nights · Minimum 1 night · Best arrival two hours by bus from Prague · Airport PRG, 130 km · Walkability total, along one valley · Best without a car yes