Bechyne

Bechyne sits on a rock spur above the Luznice with a chateau, a Franciscan monastery with an unusual diamond-ribbed vault, and a small arcaded square. It has been a ceramics town since the eighteenth century, with clay from the surrounding deposits, and it holds a ceramics school founded in 1884 and a museum of the trade; kilns and workshops still operate and the town runs a ceramics symposium. It has also been a spa since 1728, using peat and mineral water for musculoskeletal treatment. The railway from Tabor, opened in 1903 to a design by Frantisek Krizik, was the first electrified line in Austria-Hungary and in what became Czechoslovakia, and it still runs, crossing the Luznice on the Bechyne rainbow bridge - a reinforced-concrete arch of 1928 which carries road and rail together over a deep gorge and is a technical monument in its own right.

What you actually see

• The first electrified railway - Krizik's line of 1903 from Tabor, still running.
• The rainbow bridge - a 1928 concrete arch carrying road and rail over the gorge.
• A ceramics town - school, museum, working kilns and a summer symposium.
• A spa since 1728 - peat and mineral treatment on the spur above the river.

When to go

May to September. A day.

Honest expectations

Spa treatments are for registered patients. The chateau opens seasonally on guided routes. The railway runs a limited timetable. The town is small and quiet outside the season.

Nearby

Tabor is twenty kilometres north-east along the railway.