Why Marienbad is on the UNESCO list — the story of an exceptional heritage

24 July 2021 — the day the world said "yes"

On that day the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, meeting at its extended 44th session chaired from Fuzhou, China, inscribed "The Great Spa Towns of Europe" on the World Heritage List by decision 44 COM 8B.16. The property received the number 1613, and Mariánské Lázně (Marienbad) is listed within it as component 1613-005 — one of eleven towns granted the highest level of international protection for cultural heritage.

It was no accident. It was the result of a decade of preparation, expert documentation and international cooperation between seven European states: the first impulse came from a conference in Baden-Baden in 2010, the nomination dossier of more than a thousand pages was submitted to UNESCO in January 2019, and on 4 June 2021 the advisory body ICOMOS published its recommendation to inscribe.

What are the Great Spa Towns of Europe?

The Great Spa Towns of Europe is a transnational serial UNESCO property that recognises the exceptional European spa phenomenon — a cultural phenomenon that peaked from around 1700 to the 1930s.

It is not a list of individual buildings. It is the recognition of an entire system — the interlinking of natural resources, architecture, town planning, medicine, culture and social life that made the spa towns of Europe a civilisational phenomenon in their own right.

Eleven towns, seven countries

Country	Town
Czech Republic	Mariánské Lázně, Karlovy Vary, Františkovy Lázně
Germany	Baden-Baden, Bad Ems, Bad Kissingen
Austria	Baden bei Wien
Belgium	Spa
France	Vichy
Italy	Montecatini Terme
United Kingdom	Bath

The Czech Republic and Germany each have three towns in the inscription. All three Czech towns lie in West Bohemia, in the so-called spa triangle.

Why Marienbad?

The property was inscribed under two criteria, and Marienbad contributes to fulfilling both:

Criterion (ii) — Interchange of values

The Great Spa Towns bear witness to an important interchange of ideas that influenced the development of medicine, balneology and leisure from around 1700 to the 1930s.

Marienbad enters this story as the place where the physicians of the Teplá monastery — beginning with Josef Johann Nehr in the late 18th century — systematically researched the mineral springs, and where carbonated baths and the use of spring gas developed alongside the drinking cure. The knowledge gained here travelled across the whole of Europe, and the guests with it.

Criterion (iii) — Exceptional testimony

The Great Spa Towns represent exceptional testimony to the European spa phenomenon, which has its roots in antiquity but reached its highest expression in the period from 1700 to the 1930s.

Marienbad is that testimony in an exceptionally pure form. It did not grow organically over centuries: the independent municipality was established only in 1812, and its construction was regulated from the outset in both massing and layout — a planned spa town, where town planning, architecture and landscape serve a single purpose.

What exactly does UNESCO protect?

The Mariánské Lázně component covers 835 ha and, besides the historic core — the urban heritage reserve — also includes the surrounding therapeutic landscape with the golf course and the forest parks. It is protected by a buffer zone of 3,677 ha, the largest of all eleven components. You will find a detailed overview on the UNESCO World Heritage page.

The mineral springs

Around 40 mineral springs rise in the town itself, and about a hundred more in the immediate surroundings. They are cold acidulous waters at 7–10 °C, rich in carbon dioxide, calcium, magnesium, iron and salts; six of them are used above all for drinking cures — the Cross, Rudolph, Caroline, Forest, Ambrose and Ferdinand Springs. The Maria Spring is a curiosity: it is not water but a vent of spring gas with 99.7% carbon dioxide. The springs are the foundation of the entire treatment system and the reason the town came into being at all.

The Main Colonnade

The neo-Baroque cast-iron colonnade presently measures 135 metres (originally 180 metres together with the so-called Old Colonnade); the nomination dossier describes it as the longest colonnade in a spa town. It was built in 1888–1889 to designs by the Viennese architects Hans Miksch and Julian Niedzielski by the local builder Johann Koenig, on the footprint of the original Kursaal. The cast-iron structure was made by Prince Salm's ironworks in Blansko. The ceiling is decorated with Josef Vyleťal's fresco cycle on the theme "Man and the Universe". The colonnade is a National Heritage Monument — more on the Colonnade and Singing Fountain page.

Nové Lázně

A spa building in Italian Neo-Renaissance style, built in 1893–1896 to the plans of Marienbad native Josef Schaffer and ceremonially opened on 1 June 1896. On the ground floor are two magnificent cabins for carbonated baths — today's Imperial and Royal cabins — and the Roman Baths in the form of an ancient double atrium with two pools; according to the operator, they are carried by columns of dark red Salzburg marble with capitals of white Carrara stone. More in the article 130 years of Nové Lázně.

The Cross Spring pavilion

The colonnade temple with its dome, built in 1818–1826 probably to designs by Georg Fischer, is the symbol of Marienbad. The spring itself is first mentioned in the annals of the Teplá monastery in 1749 as a "salty acidulous water" — and the same year the Teplá pharmacist Damián Schulz erected a tall wooden cross beside it, from which the spring took its name.

The Kursaal — Casino

A social building of 1867, to which Josef Schaffer added a transverse wing with a large vaulted dome in 1899–1900. It remains the cultural centre of the town to this day.

The Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary

The deanery church on the rise above the colonnade was built in 1844–1848 in the historicist neo-Byzantine style to plans by the Munich architect Johann Gottfried Gutensohn.

The spa parks

The parks were designed and, from 1817, laid out by the gardener Václav Skalník, later mayor of the town; with the architect Georg Fischer and the builder Anton Thurner he created a park town of neoclassical and Empire-style houses, gazebos and pavilions out of the marshy valley in 1817–1823. After Skalník's study trip to England, the park took on an English landscape character in the early 1820s. Forest, springs and architecture merge here into a single whole.

The Singing Fountain

A modern addition to the historic heritage: the musical fountain in front of the colonnade was built in 1982–1986 to a design by the architect Pavel Mikšík and first played on 30 April 1986 with Petr Hapka's composition "Music for a Fountain". Just two of its ten spray systems are made up of 330 nozzles in perimeter rings. It plays every odd hour, and the season runs from 30 April to 31 October. More in the article on the Singing Fountain.

The golf course and forest parks

The component also includes the landscape beyond the town's edge. The golf club was founded in 1904 and its course was ceremonially opened on 21 August 1905 in the presence of King Edward VII of Britain; it was extended to eighteen holes in 1929, and since 2003 the club has been permitted to use the title "Royal" with the consent of Queen Elizabeth II. The nomination dossier ranks it among the oldest golf courses in Central Europe. To the south-east, the protected area includes the forest park with paths to the Hamelika lookout tower (722 m above sea level), whose stone tower was built in 1876 by the builder Friedrich Zickler. More about the course on the Golf page.

What makes Marienbad exceptional among the eleven towns?

A planned spa town

Unlike Bath or Vichy, which grew organically over centuries, Marienbad came into being by decision of the abbot of the Teplá monastery, Karl Kaspar Reitenberger, as an independent municipality in 1812 — on a site where only a few years earlier there had been nothing but a wooden hut by the spring. As early as 6 November 1818 it was declared a public spa by a decree of the Supreme Burgrave Libštejnský, and on 29 May 1865 Emperor Franz Joseph I elevated it to the status of a town (it received its coat of arms on 1 June 1866).

A town in the forest

The spa centre lies in a basin of the Slavkov Forest at an altitude of about 630 metres. The forest here is not mere scenery: it belongs to the protected component, the forest paths serve terrain cures and climate therapy, and the buffer zone that protects it is, at 3,677 ha, the largest of all eleven towns in the property. The whole area, moreover, lies within the Slavkovský les Protected Landscape Area, which covers about 640 km².

Four natural healing resources

Mineral waters, peat, spring gas — and since 2023 an officially confirmed healing climate as well. Thanks to this, Marienbad uses the designation Climatic Spa, and the town itself presents itself as the only place in the world with all four professionally confirmed natural healing resources. The diversity of springs with differing chemical composition — the nomination distinguishes four types of water — allows an individually composed drinking cure.

The role of the Teplá monastery

The story of Marienbad begins with the Premonstratensian monastery of Teplá, founded in 1193 by the Bohemian nobleman Hroznata, who brought canons to it from Strahov in Prague. The land of today's spa belonged to the monastery; the healing effects of the springs were known to locals as early as the Middle Ages, and in 1528 they were examined for salt content on the order of King Ferdinand I. Systematic research, however, began only with the monastery physician Josef Johann Nehr in the late 18th century: in 1805–1807 he built the first brick house for guests, the "Golden Ball", by the Cross Spring, and in 1808 the place received its name after the image of the Virgin Mary hung by the spring.

The turning point came with Abbot Reitenberger (in office 1812–1827), who pushed through the construction of the spa town against the opposition of his brethren — and paid for it with later exile in Tyrol. The railway arrived in 1872, and in 1870–1914 Marienbad lived through its golden age, from which most of today's historicist and Art Nouveau buildings date. In the 20th century the town went through periods of decline and change; since 1990 its original character, architecture and parks have been undergoing restoration. The full chronology is on the History page.

Famous guests — proof of world significance

That Marienbad was no mere regional place of treatment is proved by the list of guests who came here:

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — visited the town three times in 1820–1823; during his last stay, in the Golden Grape House (today the Municipal Museum), he experienced his late love for the young Baroness Ulrike von Levetzow, which he expressed in his "Elegy"
Fryderyk Chopin (1836) — came from Paris following Maria Wodzińska and stayed at the White Swan House. The festival held since 1960 now bears his name
King Edward VII — visited Marienbad nine times in 1897–1909, opened the local golf course and made the town a summer stage of European diplomacy
Emperor Franz Joseph I — his meeting with Edward VII on 16 August 1904 is among the most significant diplomatic events in the town's history
Mark Twain (1891) and Franz Kafka (1916) — writers whose traces are commemorated by the Writers' Trail

More about the famous guests and the history of the town.

What UNESCO status means in practice

Protection

Any building work within the component and the buffer zone must be consulted with the heritage authorities. The aim is to preserve the authentic character of the town — its architecture, its park landscape and its connection with nature.

Commitment

By inscription, the Czech Republic committed itself to the permanent care of the monuments, ongoing monitoring of the state of the heritage and regular reporting to UNESCO. For this purpose the town has its own site manager and a Local Management Plan.

Prestige

UNESCO status is an internationally recognised mark of exceptionality. For Marienbad it means greater visibility on the world map of cultural tourism — alongside towns such as Bath, Baden-Baden and Vichy.

Climatic spa (since 2023)

In 2023 Marienbad additionally gained the status of a climatic spa — official confirmation that the local climate counts among the natural healing resources. Whether and how the climate is reflected in the treatment plan is always decided by the spa physician.

Why visit a UNESCO town

Marienbad is not a museum. It is a living spa, where a two-hundred-year tradition meets modern medicine. You can bathe at Nové Lázně, where the Royal and Imperial cabins survive to this day. You can drink from the same springs Goethe walked to. And you can stroll through the parks that Václav Skalník began laying out more than two hundred years ago.

That is what UNESCO protects — not individual buildings, but the whole story. The story of a place where nature, architecture and human care created something exceptional.

Would you like to walk it? We have prepared a walk through the UNESCO town. More about architecture, planning your visit and accommodation in Marienbad.