Where to Stay in Teplice, Ústecký kraj

What is Teplice known for?

Its hot springs have drawn bathers for over a thousand years, its château and colonnades once made it a fashionable salon of Europe where kings and composers met, and gardens and a hilltop castle ring the town. Warm springs rise beneath the streets. Spa and springs mark the town.

What are the main landmarks in Teplice?

Teplice Castle stands at the heart of the spa town. The old château of the counts, built over a medieval convent, rises on the castle square, the emblem of the city, by the spa gardens. Springs and colonnades ring the centre.

The warm spa colonnades draw the bathers, while the Regional Museum in the château and the hilltop Doubravská hora castle mark the town.

What is the history of Teplice?

Teplice grew up around its hot springs. Legend says the healing waters were found in the eighth century, and a convent and then a town rose over the springs, so that Teplice became one of Europe's first spas. The great came to take the waters.

Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, kings, nobles, and artists filled the spa each season, and it earned the name of the salon of Europe, where in 1812 Beethoven and Goethe famously met. The château shaped the town. The old convent became a grand castle of the ruling counts, with a fine square and gardens, and the spa colonnades spread around the springs.

Coal and industry came later. The hills around the town were mined for brown coal, and Teplice grew into an industrial city as well as a spa, through the wars and the years behind the Iron Curtain. The old spa still draws its bathers.

Teplice keeps its springs and its château below the mountains.

Where is Teplice?

Teplice lies at the foot of the Ore Mountains in northern Bohemia. The city sits in a green basin between the wooded ridge of the mountains and the low hills of the Czech interior, near the German border, on a plain of coal and hot springs. Wooded slopes rise to the north.

The basin opens south to the hills.

What is the climate of Teplice?

Mild continental weather shapes the year in Teplice. Warm summers and cold winters cross the basin, sheltered a little by the mountains from the worst of the weather, with rain spread through the year. Snow lies on the Ore ridge in winter.

The warm springs steam in the cold air.

How do you get to Teplice?

Teplice lies in the northwest of Bohemia near the German border. A rail line and roads run to it from Prague and Ústí nad Labem across the hills, and the mountain roads climb to the Ore range. Buses reach the spa villages around.

Most arrive by road from Prague.