Karlovy Vary: the spa that gave Carlsbad its name

Founded according to legend by Charles IV after a hunted deer in a hunting expedition led him to a hot spring, Karlovy Vary has been the Bohemia's most celebrated spa city for centuries.

The spa center, which lent its name to Carlsbad waters, is comfortably explored on foot along the Teplá River.

The Mill Colonnade, a Neo-Renaissance loggia from the nineteenth century, encloses five of the twelve hot springs in the city, each with a different temperature and mineral composition.

Just steps away, the Vřídlo Spring, the hottest in the city, shoots a jet of boiling water into the air up to twelve meters high.

Taking the funicular upward you reach Diana's Tower, a panoramic viewpoint over the entire valley and the wooded hills surrounding the spa town.

Toward evening, a stroll through the Liberty-style palaces of the center leads to historic shops of the Bohemian crystal trade, produced in the region for centuries.

Visitors to the spa still drink the hot sulfurous water directly from porcelain cups with a side spout, specially designed to be carried from one spring to another.

The city's historic English name, Carlsbad, is still used abroad more often than its original Czech name, a legacy of the international fame its spa achieved in the nineteenth century.