Kadan

Kadan stands on a rock above the Ohre and kept an unusually complete medieval circuit: walls, bastions and gates around a compact old town on the bluff, with the castle at one end. Its best-known feature is Katova ulicka, the Executioner's Lane, a passage running between the town wall and the backs of the houses which narrows to about sixty-six centimetres - roughly two feet - making it one of the narrowest streets in Europe and genuinely impassable for two people at once. The town hall tower of the fifteenth century leans and is climbable. There is a Franciscan monastery of the 1470s outside the walls with a cloister and a Gothic portal, and a large arcaded square. Kadan sits between the Ore Mountains and the brown-coal basin, and the contrast between the preserved old town and the industrial landscape outside is sharp.

History

The name most likely comes from the personal name Kadan. The plateau of Úhošť hill above the town was inhabited in the Bronze Age and carried a Celtic hillfort, and some theories place here Wogastisburg, scene of a battle between Franks and Slavs in 631. Kadaň is first mentioned in 1183; it probably began as a market settlement at the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries, in 1186 Duke Frederick gave it to the Knights Hospitaller, and around 1260 it became a free royal town and the castle was built. A fire in 1362 destroyed town and castle, both were restored with better fortifications, and Charles IV granted rights, among them a vineyard and an annual market. The Hussites took the town in 1421 and held it until the end of the wars; the Lobkowicz family held it as a pledge from 1469 to 1519, and Jan Hasištejnský of Lobkowicz founded the Franciscan monastery and the Church of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. In 1534 the "Kadaň religious peace" was negotiated here between the Württemberg Protestants and Emperor Ferdinand I. During the Thirty Years' War the town suffered fires and plundering in 1631, 1635 and 1648, and the castle stayed a ruin until the second half of the 18th century, when Empress Maria Theresa had it rebuilt as barracks. The last great fire came in 1811, and after 1848 Kadaň became a district centre (Wikipedia, Kadaň).

Highlights

• The Executioner's Lane - a passage narrowing to about sixty-six centimetres.
• A complete wall circuit - bastions and gates around the bluff-top old town.
• A leaning town hall tower - fifteenth-century, climbable.
• A Franciscan monastery - of the 1470s with a cloister, outside the walls.

When to go

April to October. A day.

Before you go

The lane is genuinely narrow and awkward with a bag or a pushchair. The tower and museum close on Mondays. The surrounding landscape is industrial and post-mining.

Nearby

Klasterec nad Ohri is upstream; Chomutov is east.

Key facts