For centuries before it was left to slumber behind
Czechoslovakia's Iron Curtain, Karlovy Vary -- Karlsbad in
German -- was a legendary European spa, its therapeutic mineral
springs attracting the fashionable and the fawning, the earliest
It Girls and the truly ailing. Peter the Great visited twice,
and Emperor Franz Josef found time for a repeat trip, too.
Beethoven, Liszt and Chopin took the waters and called at
the right cafes, as did Goethe, Turgenev and Tolstoy. Even
Marx submitted to some pampering, though he probably didn't
call it that since he was in the midst of drafting ''Das Kapital.''
Lore has it that Karlovy Vary got its start in the mid-14th
century, when Charles IV was both king of Bohemia and Roman
emperor. A group of his attendants, chasing a stag through
the woods, were suddenly summoned by the howls of a hunting
dog. They discovered the hound paddling in a pool of steaming
water and, after fishing it out, founded Karlovy Vary -- literally
Charles's Spring.
Baths in the waters from the town's 14 springs were first
prescribed to treat a host of disorders. Those early soaks,
hours long, were nicknamed ''skin eaters'' and could sometimes
be worse than the ailments, leaving the skin chapped, raw
and oozing. Some patients prepared their wills before arriving.
Later, the drinking cure was added, at one point requiring
as many as 50 cups of water a day. Between treatments, there
were concerts and dances, visits over coffee and cake, and
terrain therapy -- strolls through the steep, pine-crested
woods that rim the town, the hills traversed with scenic lookout
points, shady wooden summerhouses and, of course, pubs and
cafes.
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