Žatec

Did You Know?

• Beer brewing in Žatec began in 1261; hop growing is first documented in 1348.
• Žatec was used as a filming location for the Oscar-winning film Jojo Rabbit (2019).
• The town is home to three secondary schools, including a gymnasium and a business academy.

Geography

Žatec lies roughly 18 km west of Louny and 62 km northwest of Prague, in the agricultural Most Basin. The Ohře River flows through the town; the Liboc joins it on the western outskirts, and the Blšanka flows through the Trnovany part before joining the Ohře just outside the town boundary. The highest point reaches 337 m above sea level. The climate is classified as oceanic, with an annual average temperature of 9.5 °C, July the hottest month at 19.6 °C, and January the coldest at 0.1 °C. Annual precipitation averages 475.8 mm, with July wettest at 69.9 mm and February driest at 17.8 mm. Extreme temperatures have ranged from −31.2 °C (11 February 1929) to 38.9 °C (20 August 2012).

History

The first written mention of Žatec appears in Thietmar of Merseburg's Latin chronicle from 1004. It was first called a town in 1248, and King Ottokar II granted it royal town privileges in 1265. By the 16th century the population had reached about 5,000, making it one of the kingdom's most populous towns. In 1827 the first chain bridge in Bohemia was built over the Ohře. From the Hussite Wars until the Thirty Years' War the town was Hussite or Protestant; after the Battle of White Mountain most Czech inhabitants left, and it remained ethnically German until 1945, when the Germans were expelled. On 3 June 1945, 5,000 male Sudeten German inhabitants were marched to Postoloprty; at least 763 were murdered, with estimates ranging up to 2,000 victims killed by Czechoslovak military.

Sights

The historic core has been protected as an urban monument reservation since 1961, containing buildings from the Romanesque period through Art Nouveau. Since 2003, an area south of the centre has been an urban monument zone, valued for technical constructions linked to hop growing. The Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, originally Romanesque with preserved Romanesque parts, received the Chapel of Saint John of Nepomuk in 1724–1728 and a Baroque west façade around 1740. The hop and brewing tradition is presented through the Hop Museum, Brewing Museum, and the Temple of Hops and Beer, a tourist complex with a lookout tower and a small astronomical clock. In 2023, Žatec and the Landscape of Saaz Hops (including Trnovany and Stekník) were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. Retro Computer in Žatec is a permanent exhibition of functional home computers from the 1970s to the 1990s, a private collection of over 135 pieces.