A Month the Composer Never Forgot
Some summer stays linger in the memory for a lifetime. For Fryderyk Chopin, it was August 1836, spent in Mariánské Lázně. He had come to join the Wodziński family — and above all their daughter Maria, with whom he was in love. For the spa town, which did not yet even possess its famous cast-iron colonnade, it was merely one of many aristocratic visits that summer. For the history of music, however, it was an episode whose echoes can still be heard in Mariánské Lázně today — every August, when the town hosts the International Chopin Festival.
For visitors from Britain, the town lies roughly three hours east of Nuremberg by road and around 180 kilometres from Prague, the nearest international airport.
Summer 1836: A Meeting at the Springs
The family of the Polish nobleman Wodziński arrived in Mariánské Lázně on 9 July 1836. Chopin followed just under three weeks later, on 28 July. He took lodgings at the inn "At the White Swan" — the building that today bears the name Chopin House and stands on a street named after the composer. Until 24 August he enjoyed carefree weeks in the spa town: music-making, reading, and long walks through the spa parks and along the promenade by the mineral springs.
It is worth picturing the town Chopin came to know. The famous cast-iron Main Colonnade, today the unmistakable emblem of Mariánské Lázně, did not yet exist — it was built only in 1888–1889, more than half a century after Chopin's visit, to designs by the Viennese architects Miksch and Niedzielský. The composer therefore strolled through a young, still-developing spa town whose healing tradition dates back to 1808.
It was also in Mariánské Lázně that Maria Wodzińska painted her celebrated watercolour portrait of Chopin — one of the few likenesses of the composer made during his lifetime, sensitive and full of affection.
The Secret Engagement
The real turning point came only after the spa summer. The Wodzińskis and Chopin moved on to Dresden, and there, on the evening of 9 September 1836, on the eve of his departure, Chopin asked for Maria's hand. Maria accepted his proposal — on one condition: that he take careful care of his fragile health. The engagement remained secret, known only to the closest family circle.
But the happiness did not last. Chopin's health was indeed precarious, and the Wodziński family — the men in particular — regarded the penniless artist, without fortune or settled position, with growing reserve. Over the course of 1837 they quietly let the engagement lapse. Chopin carefully kept Maria's letters in a bundle that he later inscribed with the Polish words "Moja bieda" — "My sorrow".
Which Works Do (and Do Not) Belong to Mariánské Lázně
Many musical legends surround Chopin and Maria Wodzińska, and among them are a few errors worth setting straight.
Dedicated to Maria Wodzińska is the famous Waltz in A-flat major, Op. 69 No. 1, known as "L'Adieu" (the "Farewell Waltz"). Yet Chopin had given it to her as early as September 1835 in Dresden — a year before the Mariánské Lázně summer — with the handwritten dedication "Pour Mlle Marie". It bears no direct connection to the 1836 stay or to the later engagement.
Nor was the Waltz in A-flat major, Op. 34 No. 1 composed in Mariánské Lázně: Chopin wrote it in 1835 at the castle in Děčín (then Tetschen) and dedicated it to Josephine von Thun-Hohenstein. Neither of these waltzes, then, belongs to the August of 1836 in Mariánské Lázně — even though the mood of both perfectly captures the romantic spirit that bound Chopin to Maria.
The Chopin Festival: A Living Memory
It took more than a century for Mariánské Lázně to turn this romantic episode into a living cultural tradition. On 6 June 1959 the Fryderyk Chopin Society was founded here, and that same year saw the first edition of the Chopin Festival. Also in 1959, a memorial to the composer was opened in Chopin House — the former inn "At the White Swan".
From that first year grew the International Chopin Festival, held annually in the third week of August. It is among the oldest music festivals in the country — the third oldest after the Prague Spring and Smetana's Litomyšl — and to this day brings leading pianists and interpreters of Chopin's work from around the world to Mariánské Lázně. Concerts take place in historic halls and spa interiors, so that audiences listen to the music in a setting that itself tells a story.
Following Chopin's Footsteps Today
Even outside the festival week, visitors to Mariánské Lázně can explore the composer's legacy. Chopin House, with its museum, commemorates the summer of 1836 and the fateful love for Maria Wodzińska. Chopinova Street bears his name; on it stands, among others, the spa hotel Svoboda at the address Chopinova 393. A walk through the spa parks the composer so enjoyed remains one of the loveliest walks in Mariánské Lázně — and a drinking cure at one of the local springs is among the experiences that have changed little in almost two centuries.
Chopin spent only a month in Mariánské Lázně, and yet he returns, musically, every summer. Perhaps this is the very magic of spa towns: they preserve even the most fleeting moments of human lives and hand them on to later generations — as music, as memory, and as the quiet atmosphere of the parks where a young Romantic in love once walked.
