Bohemian therapy: water cures and peat baths in central Europe’s spa capital

It’s not your average spa therapy. At dawn, in the Czech town of Karlovy Vary, I’m standing beside a 12 metre-high jet of hot spring water, inhaling lungfuls of the warm mist it gives off. After 10 minutes of almost meditative breathing at the aptly named Hot Spring, I move to a nearby street to join a cluster of people holding porcelain cups to collect water hissing and gurgling its way from a smaller spring. At first, the warm, acrid-tasting liquid makes me recoil but, following local advice, I sip my way through 400ml of the stuff while strolling beneath the town’s grand colonnades.

By nightfall, I will have imbibed a litre of mineral-rich water from some of the dozen public hot springs here: from the Mill Spring (apparently good for the liver and pancreas), the Freedom Spring (for the stomach) and the Charles IV Spring (kidneys). You get used to the taste after the first few mouthfuls.

Taking the waters in Bohemia was once the height of fashion, not just in Karlovy Vary, but also in Mariánské Lázně and Františkovy Lázně, which together form the “spa triangle” in the Czech Republic’s far west. The list of former visitors reads like a European who’s who, from Peter the Great to Sigmund Freud, by way of Chopin, Wagner, Mozart and Beethoven, and writers from Goethe to Mark Twain. No wonder that in the late 19th century, Karlovy Vary, the biggest of the three towns, became known as “the largest open-air salon of Europe”.

That salon was abruptly shut down by the first world war, and after 1948 the spa triangle was cut off from western Europe by the Iron Curtain. Last year however, its international profile was boosted when Unesco created a new transnational World Heritage Site, comprising what it judged to be the 11 “great spa towns of Europe”. Alongside Bath in England, France’s Vichy and Germany’s Baden-Baden, all three of the Czech spa triangle towns were included.

They make a fascinating alternative to a more conventional spa break, whether you want to try the water cures or simply want a couple of days of pampering in historic surroundings.

In Karlovy Vary, pastel-coloured houses dripping with ornamental facades and intricate iron balconies line the river Tepla. Nearby are the golden domes of the Orthodox Church of St Peter and Paul, the majestic neo-Renaissance Grandhotel Pupp (where Hollywood greats stay during the annual film festival) and the 14th-century castle tower used by Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia Charles IV when he came here to hunt. Legend has it he discovered a spring that helped his gout; the town was named after him, its 1370 licensing document stipulating that the townspeople must cater for people coming to bathe.

Visitors still bathe here — the rooftop pool at the modern Hotel Thermal is a particularly pleasant place to do so, while water from the town springs is diverted to some of the hotel spas for private therapies — but since Dr Vaclav Payer first suggested imbibing the spring water in 1521, it has been more common to drink it.

Dr Milada Sarova, head physician at the Hotel Prezident, extols the health-giving powers of the minerals in the water, including zinc and magnesium sulphate. “The body is 70 per cent water. If you change it with new water, you will be rejuvenated,” says the sprightly 73-year-old. Her patients have included the former leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev — “He had high sugar levels in his blood; this is the best spa for diabetes”— and young people with radiation sickness from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

If you don’t fancy drinking the water, the spas all offer more conventional therapies. At the Hotel Prezident, with its sauna and steam rooms, salt flotation tank and slick 15-metre pool, I enjoy a superb full-body massage, while at the Grandhotel Pupp, I opt for a relaxing herbal bath as well as heat therapy (lying on an infrared, vibrating bed) to loosen up my back. Meanwhile, there are plenty of walks to scenic lookouts, and some seriously good restaurants in the town.

After just a couple of days I’m feeling healthier and sleeping better, but I can’t tarry: I have an appointment for a bath in the Nove Lazne Health Spa Hotel at Mariánské Lázně, 50 minutes’ drive away.

This isn’t any old bath but the one Edward VII used; he visited the spa town nine times. And it’s seriously regal: the sunken bath is surrounded by marble columns, exquisite wall tiles and ornate woodwork and topped by a decorative vaulted ceiling. In the corner stands a carved weighing chair that Edward used — he came to the spa to lose weight.

The bath is filled with spring water that fizzes around me, depositing a fur of small bubbles all over my body. It’s rich in carbon dioxide as well as minerals and is accompanied by a faint metallic smell. Just along the corridor is the imperial bath chamber, prepared for Emperor Franz Josef, who met Edward VII here in 1904, while a few doors on is my spacious bedroom with original tiling.

This monumental château of a hotel also has what it calls “Roman baths”, created in 1896 in its basement, where it offers everything from massages and manicures to mud wraps. I decide against relaxation in favour of carbon dioxide injections for my tennis elbow. These are like acupuncture needles attached by tube to a canister of CO₂; treating musculoskeletal problems is one of the resort’s main offerings. “Mariánské Lázně’s signature treatments are based on carbon dioxide,” says the hotel’s consultant, Dr Pavel Knara, who claims the gas plays an important part in tackling respiratory illnesses.

On the edge of the Slavkov Forest and designed around a series of landscaped parks, the town was decreed a public spa in 1818. The same wedding-cake architecture as Karlovy Vary’s predominates, with ornate neoclassical and imperial facades, pavilions and colonnades. The most spectacular of these is the decorative cast-iron Main Colonnade, all 119 metres of it, with a frescoed roof to admire as you stroll and sip from the spring. Water from the nearby Cross Spring was once sent to hospitals from London to St Petersburg (but to me tastes distinctly salty).

One fan, though, was Goethe, who in his seventies met and fell in love with the teenage Ulrike von Levetzow in Mariánské Lázně. The house where he stayed is now a museum, with a statue of him outside. At the time, he apparently drank profusely from the nearby iron-rich Ambrose Spring, now nicknamed the Spring of Love.

Goethe clearly liked his spas: he visited Františkovy Lázně too, the smallest of the West Bohemia trio, easily seen on a day trip from Mariánské Lázně. Established in 1793, this little town of 5,500 inhabitants has extensive parklands filled with rhododendrons and plenty of yellow-and-white ornamental architecture, but it lacks the grandeur — and the spectacular colonnades — of its two sister spa towns

Františkovy Lázně does, though, come with its own speciality: peat. In fact, the town claims to be the world’s first peat spa. On its fringes lies the Soos national nature reserve, with extensive peat bogs and fens. As I approach the grand late 19th-century Imperial Spa, part of the Spa Resort Pawlik, a tractor trundles past, taking its load of ferrous sulphate-rich peat to one of the hotels.

The peat is believed to alleviate pain from arthritis or rheumatism, and is even used in gynaecological treatments. My problem is still elbow pain, so I sink into a chocolate-coloured bath where 80kg of peat has been dissolved in 120 litres of water. The 15-minute soak is strangely relaxing and, when I’m decanted on to an adjacent bed to recover, I could easily fall asleep.

Though the treatments might seem outlandish to foreign guests, many Czech visitors to the three towns have their stays covered by health insurance. Sadly, there’s no time to experience the hotel’s extensive indoor aqua park, nor the other more classic relaxation treatments.

Before I leave, there is one final unusual remedy to try. Back in Karlovy Vary, at the Becherovka visitor centre, I learn that the liqueur they traditionally made here from more than 20 different herbs and spices was originally marketed in 1807 for stomach aches under the name English Bitter. Although it was later commercialised as a drink by the Becher family and is now owned by Pernod Ricard, Czechs still use it to ease the stomach as well as the soul.

“We call it the 13th spring of Karlovy Vary,” smiles the museum guide as she pours me a glass. I raise my glass and take a sip. It’s strong and spicy but not at all to my taste — I’m sticking with the spa water.

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