Teplice

Teplice has been using its hot springs since a Benedictine convent was founded over them around 1156, which makes it the oldest continuously working spa in Central Europe. Its great period was the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when it was called the Salon of Europe: royalty, generals and writers came, and in July 1812 Beethoven and Goethe met here and walked together, an encounter that produced the famous anecdote about Beethoven refusing to step aside for an approaching imperial party while Goethe stood back and bowed - a story that is probably embroidered but has been told ever since. The spa park, the chateau with the museum, the colonnade and the Regional Theatre remain. The town was heavily damaged by mining and postwar building and the historic centre is fragmentary, so the spa quarter carries most of what is left.

What you actually see

• A spa working since about 1156 - the oldest continuously used in Central Europe.
• The Salon of Europe - the nineteenth-century quarter that hosted its visitors.
• The 1812 meeting - Beethoven and Goethe walking here, and the anecdote about it.
• The chateau museum - over the convent that first used the springs.

When to go

May to September. A day.

Honest expectations

Treatments are for booked patients. The historic centre is fragmentary - mining and postwar building took much of it. The spa quarter is the part worth walking. Some outer districts are run-down.

Nearby

Duchcov is west; the Ore Mountains rise north.