Karlovy Vary

See also: Karlsbad

Karlovy Vary ( Karlsbad in German) is a city and a Thermal spa located in the Western part of the Czech Republic. The city owes its name with Charles IV, which visited the place in the years 1370. She is historically famous for her sources of the warm water (12 primary sources and approximately 300 secondaries), largest and hottest (73° C) being Vrídlo ( der Sprudel in German) and for her river with warm water, the Teplá which is thrown in the Ohře at this place.

The city is perhaps better known today for its international cinema festival. Karlovy Vary is also the place where famous the Liqueur Karlovarská Becherovka is produced and bottled.

The city became suspect as a Czech Republic, because it is an investment and holiday place for the Russian gangsters.

History

The king of Bohemia and emperor Charles IV of the Holy roman Empire granted a charter to the city the August 14th 1370 which took on this date the name even of this sovereign. One used initially the thermal springs for the establishments of bath, then with the XVIe century to output a mineral water. The first concessions of sources were consigned in writing in 1522.

The May 9th 1582 the city was flooded by a rising of the Tepla river, then the August 13rd 1604 it disappeared almost entirely in a fire. Largely damaged during the War Thirty Year old, the city was only rebuilt very slowly. In 1707, the emperor Joseph Ier granted to him all the privileges of a “Ville of empire”. The rights on the baths were instituted at the time of the visit of the tsar Pierre Ier of Russia in 1711 and 1712. The first institution muniicpale of cure at a watering-place was built this same year 1711. A new fire in 1759 destroyed again about half of the city. The interest of the cures at a watering-place was established scientifically by work of Dr. David Becher, author of a treaty on the institution of the baths of Karlsbad where it showed the interest of rock salt in thermal spring. The Austrian state introduced in 1795 a particular tax on the cures at a watering-place ( Kurtaxe ), in order to accelerate the rebuilding of the city.

The town of Karlsbad was acquired a sorry reputation at the time of the Conférence of Karlsbad in 1819, concluded between the Austrian Chancelier Metternich and the states from the Germanic Confédération: the clauses of the Décrets of Karlsbad last between the signatures related to the censures press and the repression of the liberal, long-lived demonstrations in countries which were concerned a war of liberation against France.

Hydrotherapy made it possible the town of finally take its take-off. The number of visitors passed from 134 families in 1756 to 26.000 curists at the end of the XIXe century. In 1911, this figure was of 71.000. It is of this gilded time that date the majority of the significant buildings of the city the such colonnade known as of the “source of the mill” conceived by the architect Josef Zítek who had already carried out the national theater of Prague or even the Grandhotel Pupp, one time also marked by the presence of many Russian visitors who made build a church on the model of the cathedral Saint-Basile of Moscow.

The Great War put brutally fine at tourism, crisis which will perdura until the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918. Populated mainly Germans, Karlovy Vary and his area was attached to the news Czechoslovakia by the Traité of Saint-Germain. What involved disorders between the populations German and Czech. March 4th, 1919, a German demonstration ended in the death of six Germans, killed by the Czech troops. This larval confrontation between the communities was completed only by the annexation in 1938 of the area of the Sudètes by the Nazi Germany and then by expulsion in 1945 of the majority of the German-speaking population.

With the release, Karlovy Vary took again its statute of town of holiday, becoming the center of recreation of will nomenklatura communist. The thermal activity thus took again all the year and in 1968 was organized for the first time the festival of film of Karlovy Vary.

Economy

The city counts 51.537 inhabitants (census of 2005) divided out of 59,10 km

Thermal spa

Karlovy vary is a town of water which counts many hotels to accommodate the curists and the festival ones at the time of the International festival of film of Karlovy Vary at at the beginning of July, of which most famous, the Large Pupp Hotel.

The thermal baths include/understand a swimming pool with open sky, whose warm water comes naturally from the source. It is thus possible in winter to bathe with the heat in front of the snow which decorates the edges of the swimming pool.

Dr. David Becher manifestly took part in the modernization of the thermal activity of the city (he dies in 1792). It becomes the appointment society man of Mittel Europa with XIXe and beginning of the XXe century.

The sources of the city are bottled and mineral water of Karlovy vary (whose Mattoni which formerly watered the court of the emperor of Austria-Hungary) are consumed in all the Czech Republic.

Glassmaking

Famous the Cristallerie Moser is established there.

Porcelain

Karlovy vary is also famous for its Porcelaine with the blue drawing cobalt on white zone and, in particular, the typical use of the reason for the ognon ( cibule in Czech).

Agro-alimentary

The famous drink created by Jan Beaker, the Liqueur Karlovarská Becherovka was recently acquired by the group Pernod Ricard.

Carlobalnéens famous

  • František Běhounek, scientist and novelist
  • Karl Hermann Frank, officer Nazi
  • Walter Kaufmann, type-setter
  • August Labitzky, type-setter
  • Johann Josef Loschmidt, scientist
  • August Pfizmaier, orientalist
  • Marie-Christine von Reibnitz, wife of prince Michael de Kent
  • Walter Serner, dadaist
  • Hana Soukupová, supermodèle
  • Karin Stoiber, first lady of Bavaria
  • Divided into volumes Vokoun, hockey player
  • Carl Weidl-Raymon, defender of the European unification

Famous visitors

External bonds

  • Official site of the city (in Czech, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian)
  • Tourist site on Karlovy Vary and the thermal triangle (in French)
  • tourist Guide of Karlovy Vary and Bohemian of the West (in French)
  • Official site of the house of city (in Czech)
  • Site of mineral water of Karlovy Vary Mattoni (in English)
  • Site of the Large Pupp Hotel (in French
  • Site of liquor of Jan Beaker, Becherovka (in English)
  • Site of Moser crystal manufacture (in English)
  • Site of the porcelain of Karlovy vary Thun (in English)

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