Žatec – Landscape of Hops

Žatec would be a great representative of a WHS dedicated to beer production if it were in the form it was in 100 years ago. Today the town is a shadow of its past. The monuments related to hop processing are neither distinctive nor spectacular.

Žatec itself is not a picturesque town. In fact, it is one of the last places I would want to invite a foreign visitor to the Czech Republic. The locals are proud that the town has been featured in a number of Czech and foreign films. However, it served as exteriors for scenes from the Second World War. Indeed, parts of the town centre are so run-down that they evoke the atmosphere of a town that has just experienced a Soviet offensive.

Visitors are drawn to the newly built Temple of Hops and Beer, which includes a nice museum. However, the Hop Temple itself, including the observation tower, looks rather cheap and doesn't offer much insight into history.

Aesthetically, by far the most interesting building is the so-called Dreher Brewery from 1898. At the time it was one of the largest breweries in Europe. It is a beautiful example of industrial architecture from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The neo-renaissance industrial building of the brewery is also unique in appearance. The red brick façades and ornamental sandstone details are interesting. Unfortunately, the buildings are deteriorating. If the city manages to renovate them in the future, I believe Dreher's Brewery …

There are these ideas of future WHS you have in your mind when you travel a bit. For instance, I would love a historic pub serial site in the UK and Ireland. Alas, I am only missing the proper locations to match to my idea. And obviously a say in the UK heritage committee and tentative list.

For Czechia, it always felt that a beer country, should have a beer related site. They like beer around here. My intuition would have pointed me towards Cesky Budejovice (Budweis) or Plzeň (Pilsen). Cesky Budejovice has a nice market square and is home to the original Budweiser brewery. Plzeň is where Pils was invented. But having been to Budweis, I didn't see it. The brewery is rather modern and I saw nothing to be nostalgic about. Not sure about Plzen, but I guess this falls in the same category... My hope was that the Czechs had scouted their land and found the perfect place for a beer WHS: Zatec? ... Unfortunately, no, they didn't.

Traveling between Karlsbad and Prague, I explored the town for a few hours. I can confirm the previous reviewers' comments that there is very little to see. There are some former breweries and store houses, but it doesn't amount to much and the state of preservation (see my picture) is rather poor. The hops museum allows you to explore one storehouse, nice but not stellar. The best part of my visit, the old town with a small …

I gave the second chance to Žatec and the landscape of Saaz hops in July 2021. After deferral in 2018, the state party of Czechia submitted the new nomination file to be evaluated in 2022. The Žatec historical core with the Prague suburb was kept, but the cultural landscape with hops fields around villages Stekník and Trnovany has been added following the advice of ICOMOS. Though the new nomination is still problematic (bad shape of hops-related buildings, which lost their original function and their original owners have been repelled after WWII), it is better than the previous one, as its potential OUV might be expressed. Anyway, I expect inscription in 2022.

This time I omitted Žatec and went to the hops field component (now assigned as the component No.1), the focal point of which is Stekník hops village with small baroque chateau. The logistic is a bit complicated because of almost no public transport to Stekník. Thus, I decided to go by fast train from Praha to Most (every two hours, direction to Karlovy Vary and Cheb), then changed to local train from Most to Žatec (every one/two hours), getting off in the Dolejší Hůrky train stop. Then walking through the villages Hradiště, Stekník, Trnovany, Zálužice, Rybňany, and Tvršice (train stop for returning to Most and Prague). It was a good decision, because I could see everything important of this component, and all the above-mentioned villages are within the core or the buffer zone. On the other hand, the …

September 2014 - I finished my studies and we bought an old VW Campervan to drive around Europe. So we switched to vanlife for few weeks.

Starting our journey, we headed south via Dresden to Czechia. Our first Twhs was Zatec. Since I am a brewing scientist, I was happy to see finally a beer spot on the list. I was quite disappointed, when Mechtild Rössler read out on the Whs meeting the deferal of the "town of hope". Obviously she did not even know what hops is and that it is a fundamental ingredient for beer.

Zatec is the home for Saazer Hops. Around the town are numerous hop fields and along the road to Prague you can spot here and there some wires and in september the are filled with winding hop plants. It is not only the destinct ingredient for czech pilsner but exported to the US for floral IPAs or to add bitterness to beers around the world. The town itself is related to hops only. We visited the hops Museum and took a creepy elevator ride on a hop tower showing a movie with a small hope cone flying above Zatec and singing "huii" and "ahoj". However, on top of the tower there was quite a nice view to the hop tens, where hops is being dried after harvest, you could see the brewery and all hop related buildings of Zatec.

With at least 10 grape sites, wine is overrepresented in the …

I visited this tentative WHS in Summer 2019 as a convenient stopover on my way to the newly inscribed Erzgebirge WHS.

Zatec has really made the most out of the regional and EU funds to exploit its main raw material for tourism. I'm glad I visited as I wouldn't have believed any information online that as much as seven fully-blown and rather large 'attractions' were linked to Zatec's hops, namely the Museum of Homolupolus, the Renaissance Malt-House Gallery, the Temple of Hops and Beer, the Peculiar Tramway Project, the Hops Astronomical Clock, the Hops Lighthouse and the Microbrewery U Orloje. Moreover, several house and building walls have been painted with hops motifs.

During my visit, I went up the modern looking Hops 'Lighthouse' (metal tower) to have a panoramic view of the whole hops town and fields and I checked out the microbrewery near the parking lot near a green area marked Zahrada. Even though I appreciate the noble attempt of attracting tourists in an otherwise ghost town of Czechia, I don't think that Zatec posseses any OUV even if it proudly claims to provide "the most important ingredient for the tastiest beers worldwide".

Historical core of Žatec belongs to one of the well-preserved medieval town structures with history over 1000 years. It was only partly modified in modern times. It does not disappoint but there are better examples in Czechia. The main reason why it is proposed as WHS is the long tradition of cultivation and processing of hops in Žatec municipality that sounds interesting and refreshing taking into account that Czechs are No.1 in consummation of beer in the world. Originally, hops was dried and further processed directly within the medieval walls as documented by shape of several roofs there. The mass production of hops led to design of new neighborhood - Prague Suburb in 19th, which preserved the shape of a standard town, but consisted mostly of buildings, factories, workshops and also quite a lot of chimneys, all related to hops drying and processing.

You can find two hops related permanent exhibitions in Prague Suburb. It is better to start with the official "museum of hops". Only "advantage" of the other one - "Temple of Hops and Beer" is that you can climb the modern hops tower with nice view (photo of the core zone of Prague Suburb). The tower was very criticized by ICOMOS in the first evaluation in 2018, so, maybe the tower will be pulled down?? I do not know... If you prefer beer drinking to museums, there is in fact only one good possibility - brewery&pub close to the museum of hops (beer is very good …

Žatec – the Hops Town is up for inclusion in the World Heritage List in 2018. I’ve not been able to find any information online yet whether the ICOMOS advice has come out positive or negative. I put the Bohemian town on my itinerary of a long weekend trip to the German/Czech border region anyway. Žatec lies only about an hour’s drive away from Marienberg in the Ore Mountains, where I was staying.

I visited on a Saturday afternoon, and already on the way to it I was surprised that ‘everything’ was closed: shops had their doors firmly shut, and I was happy that I had filled up the tank of my car in Germany as even gas stations looked doubtful. Arriving at the central square of Žatec, it was easy to park there as no one was around as well! I had expected terraces full of beer drinking locals and tourists (the weather was very sunny and warm for late April), just as in most Czech towns that I had visited before. Only after some effort I found a pizzeria open for a late lunch.

Žatec advertises itself as ‘The Hops Town’, which isn’t the same as ‘The Beer Town’: the word “beer” does not even feature in the official T list description. What you will learn from a visit is how hops actually looks like (I had not seen it before) and what they do with it before it ends up in the beer. The industry of hop …

Žatec is where a lot of beer comes from! I mean, the hops for the beer. They export it to like China, Ireland (Guinness apparently), all over the world. If you drive around the area you will see massive fields of hops but what is special about the town itself? Actually very little. It is a quiet town. Coming here to explore beer culture is not the right spot. There is a big museum and a hop tower. The tower is just to see the town from above and I don't really recommend wasting your money on it. The hop temple is actually sort of like a children attraction with a scary ride attraction but they do teach you about Žatec's hop-growing and hop-processing a little, with the building it was the former hop storage. When asked about breweries they give you some restaurants outside of town, heading almost back to Marienbad even, where they have good food and you get the local beer. Unfortunately this was going the wrong way for the trip and it was not drinking time. Of course you can pick up the Žatec beer anywhere but the shops here have a good selection too.