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.

History

People lived here in the late Bronze Age, about 1800-1600 BC, and a Slavic hillfort stood on the spur in the 8th or 9th century; the town's name comes from a personal name, Bech. The Chronica Boemorum, written around 1120, records the settlement of the Bechyně fort in 993. King Ottokar II bought Bechyně in 1268 and had a stone castle built, and in 1323 King John of Bohemia raised the market village around it to a town and had it walled. The Hussites took and burned it in 1422 and again in 1428. After passing among noble families such as the Sternbergs and the Schwambergs, it was bought in 1569 by Peter Vok of Rosenberg, under whom the town flourished and the castle was rebuilt in Renaissance style; he sold it in 1596 to Adam of Sternberg. Bechyně suffered in the Thirty Years' War, recovered and grew northwards, and in the 18th century became a spa town (Wikipedia, Bechyně).

What you'll find

• 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.

Before you go

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.

Key facts