Things to Do in Karlovy Vary: Springs, Colonnades and Spas

Karlovy Vary is a spa town of 48,788 people in west Bohemia, built along a narrow river valley around 13 hot mineral springs, and one full day covers it comfortably, two if you are taking a treatment. Walk the colonnades in the morning, drink from the springs, ride the funicular up to the Diana tower in the afternoon, and finish at the Grandhotel Pupp end of the promenade.

The town’s status changed in July 2021, when Karlovy Vary was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as one of the eleven Great Spa Towns of Europe, alongside Bath, Baden-Baden, Vichy, Spa and its Czech neighbours Mariánské Lázně and Františkovy Lázně. That is what the architecture along the Teplá is now protected as.

Prices are in Czech koruna, checked on 10 September 2026 and converted at the Czech National Bank rate for that day: €1 = 24.25 Kč, $1 = 20.88 Kč, £1 = 28.23 Kč.

How the Karlovy Vary drinking cure works

The drinking cure is free, and the only thing you have to buy is the cup. Karlovy Vary’s springs feed taps and bowls set into the colonnades, and you fill a porcelain spa cup at each one and sip as you walk. The cups have a flat handle you drink through, sold in every shop on the promenade from a few hundred koruna, and a plastic one works exactly as well if you are not taking one home.

The water is strongly mineral, warm and salty, and it is not refreshing. That is the point. The springs come out at different temperatures and are drunk for different lengths of time, and locals will tell you to start with the cooler bowls. Take it slowly on a first visit, because the water is a genuine laxative in quantity.

The best things to do in Karlovy Vary

Fifteen places are worth your time in and around Karlovy Vary, and almost all of them sit within a 25-minute walk of each other along the Teplá valley. They are listed below roughly in the order a walking day takes them.

1. The Hot Spring Colonnade and Vřídlo

Vřídlo is Karlovy Vary’s hot spring and its main event, a geyser that comes out of the ground at 73.4°C and throws water almost 12 m (39.4 ft) into the air. The Hot Spring Colonnade around it, Vřídelní kolonáda, is the modernist glass and concrete building of 1975 that arches over the geyser, the third structure on the site after colonnades of 1826 and 1878.

Inside, the thermal water is piped into a row of spring bowls where it is cooled to about 50°C and 30°C for drinking, so you can pick the temperature you can stomach. The colonnade is free to walk through. It closes for a maintenance shutdown each winter and normally reopens on 16 February, and work on the hot-spring water distribution system continued through 2026, so check before a winter trip.

2. The Mill Colonnade

The Mill Colonnade is the grand one: 142 m (466 ft) of neo-Renaissance promenade along the Teplá, built between 1871 and 1881 by Josef Zítek and Josef Schulz, the architects of Prague’s National Theatre. Its 124 Ionic columns carry a roof lined with coloured glass tiles, and five springs feed taps along its length.

Walking it with a cup is the single most Karlovy Vary thing you can do, and it costs nothing. Concerts are held under the roof through the season, and there is a small lookout at one end.

3. The Market Colonnade

The Market Colonnade, Tržní kolonáda, is the carved white wooden one, built in Swiss chalet style between 1882 and 1883 to a design by Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer, the Viennese partnership behind half the theatres in Central Europe. Its lace-like woodwork is the most photographed detail in town.

Three springs sit inside it, including the Charles IV Spring, the one legend attaches to the emperor’s hunting party and the founding of the town. A bronze relief above the spring tells that story. Entry is free.

4. Elizabeth’s Spa

Elizabeth’s Spa, known in German as Elisabethbad and in Czech as Alžbětiny lázně, is the working bath house at the far end of the spa district, built in 1906 in neo-Renaissance style along the Teplá. Behind its 112 m frontage are arched corridors, a domed hall, treatment rooms and spring-fed pools.

This is where you actually take a bath rather than look at one. Walking through the public parts is free; treatments, pools and the mineral baths are booked and paid for separately, and booking ahead matters in the high season.

5. The Church of St Mary Magdalene

The Church of St Mary Magdalene is the Baroque church at the heart of the spa district, built between 1733 and 1736 by Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer on the site of an earlier Gothic one. Its twin towers rise directly above the Hot Spring Colonnade, and the interior carries a monumental altarpiece, sculpture and frescoes.

Older listings sometimes describe it as neo-Gothic. Dientzenhofer built it in the Baroque, and it counts among the most important Baroque monuments in the country. Entry to the nave is free, an underground crypt with an ossuary can be visited, and concerts are ticketed.

6. St Peter and Paul Cathedral

St Peter and Paul Cathedral is the Russian Orthodox church above the spa district, and its five golden domes are visible from most of the valley. Gustav Wiedermann designed it in Byzantine style and it was built with money from the Russian aristocrats who wintered here in the 19th century, which is a large part of why Karlovy Vary looks the way it does.

Inside there is a majolica iconostasis, wall murals and Orthodox metalwork. It is a ten-minute walk uphill from the Mill Colonnade and worth the climb for the domes alone.

7. Diana Observation Tower and the funicular

The Diana Observation Tower is the brick lookout of 1912 to 1914 on Výšina přátelství above the town, 40 m (131.2 ft) tall with a viewing platform at 35 m. You reach the platform by 150 steps or by lift, and on a clear day the view runs a long way over the Ore Mountains.

Getting up is half the pleasure. A funicular runs from behind the Grandhotel Pupp to the tower complex, which also holds a restaurant, a butterfly house and a mini zoo, and marked forest paths come down to the town in about 40 minutes. Tickets are for the funicular and the tower lift; the woods and the viewpoint cost nothing.

8. Goethe’s Lookout Tower

Goethe’s Lookout Tower is the neo-Gothic brick tower on the Height of Eternal Life east of town, built in 1888 and 1889 and standing 42 m (137.8 ft) high on a hill 638 m (2,093.2 ft) above sea level. Its observation deck is 23.6 m up and reached by 165 internal steps.

There is a café and restaurant at the base, and the tower sits on the trail network that rings the town, which is what most people come for. Entry to the viewing gallery is by a small charge.

9. Jelení skok, the Deer Leap

Jelení skok is the rock outcrop above the spa district with a bronze chamois on top, and the classic view down the Teplá valley is from the terrace beside it. The name comes from the legend of a deer that escaped Charles IV’s hunting party by leaping from the rock, which is the same story the Charles IV Spring carries.

It is a 20-minute walk up from the Grandhotel Pupp on marked paths, and there is a café at the viewpoint. Some listings place this rock above the Ploučnice, a river 150 km away in a different region; the valley below it is the Teplá.

10. The Home of Becherovka

The Home of Becherovka is the visitor centre for the herbal liqueur that Karlovy Vary invented, at T. G. Masaryka 57 in the Steinberky building where Jan Becher started distilling in 1867. It was reworked as a visitor centre and is what older guides list as the Jan Becher Museum.

Tours run every 60 minutes from Tuesday to Sunday between 9am and 5pm, cost from 290 Kč (about €12, $14, £10) and end with a tasting. Groups are capped at 10 people, so book rather than turn up. Becherovka is sometimes called Karlovy Vary’s thirteenth spring, which tells you how the town regards it.

11. Moser Glass Museum

The Moser Glass Museum sits beside the working Moser glassworks on the edge of town, where the company has made lead-free crystal since 1893. Its exposition covers more than 165 years of the firm, with over 1,000 pieces from the earliest examples to current collections.

Museum admission is 150 Kč (about €6, $7, £5), with a family ticket at 350 Kč for two adults and two or three children aged 3 to 12. Opening hours run Monday to Saturday, 9am to 4pm. A visit to the glassworks hall itself, where you watch glassmakers at the furnaces, is booked separately and is the part worth arranging in advance.

12. Karlovy Vary Museum

Karlovy Vary Museum is the town museum, and it is the one place that explains the geology and the spa history the rest of the town is built on. Its permanent exhibition covers the springs, the growth of the resort, its architecture and the people who came for the cure.

Reduced rates apply to students, seniors, families and groups. Half an hour to an hour is enough, and it makes more sense before the colonnades than after them.

13. Karlovy Vary City Theatre

Karlovy Vary City Theatre is the neo-Baroque theatre of 1884 to 1886, another Fellner and Helmer building, and the reason to go in is the painted stage curtain, an early work by Gustav Klimt with his brother Ernst Klimt and Franz Matsch. The auditorium holds around 700 and the interior carries frescoes, sculpture and chandeliers.

The repertoire runs from drama to opera and concerts. Tickets vary by performance, and guided visits to see the curtain outside performance times are arranged through the box office.

14. Loket Castle

Loket Castle is the 13th-century Gothic castle on a rock loop of the Ohře river, 15 km (9.3 mi) west of Karlovy Vary, and it is the obvious half-day trip from the town. It was a royal seat, then a prison, and has been a museum since 1956, with palaces, a keep, dungeons and a collection of arms and porcelain.

The town of Loket underneath it is a tight medieval knot of a place and worth an hour on its own. Buses run from Karlovy Vary, and a rental car opens up the rest of west Bohemia at the same time. Our guide to castles in Czechia covers the wider set.

15. Dvořákovy sady and the Park Colonnade

Dvořákovy sady is the park at the entrance to the spa zone, laid out between 1877 and 1878 by the landscape architect Jan Hahmann, with paths, rose beds, a pond and two protected plane trees more than a century old. The statue of Antonín Dvořák that gives it its name stands among them.

The cast-iron Park Colonnade runs along one edge of it, and the whole park is free and open. It is the natural place to start a walk up the valley, because everything else follows the river from here.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival takes over the town every July and is one of the oldest film festivals in the world, first held in 1946. The Hotel Thermal is the festival centre, and screenings run in venues across the valley, with competitions for features, documentaries and student shorts alongside an industry programme.

Festival week is the one time the town is genuinely full. Rooms are booked months out and prices rise accordingly, so either come for it deliberately or avoid the first half of July. Our guide to festivals in Czechia covers the rest of the calendar.

How many days do you need in Karlovy Vary?

One day covers Karlovy Vary if you walk it, and two make sense if you are taking spa treatments or adding Loket. The spa district is a single street along a river, roughly 25 minutes end to end on foot, and the towers above it add an afternoon.

A day trip from Prague works: about two and a quarter hours each way by coach gives you six hours in the town, which is enough for the colonnades, one tower and lunch. Staying overnight buys you the thing the day-trippers miss, which is the promenade in the evening after the coaches have gone.

A one-day plan for Karlovy Vary

A Karlovy Vary day runs uphill along the river and then up the side of the valley. The plan below assumes a 9.30am start.

1. Buy a spa cup at Dvořákovy sady. Start at the bottom of the spa zone, pick up a porcelain cup and walk into the park and along the Park Colonnade.
2. Work up the colonnades. Mill Colonnade first for the columns and five springs, then the Market Colonnade for the woodwork and the Charles IV spring, then the Hot Spring Colonnade for Vřídlo itself and the cooled drinking bowls.
3. Climb to St Peter and Paul, or go in to St Mary Magdalene. Ten minutes uphill for the golden domes, or straight in for Dientzenhofer’s Baroque interior above the geyser.
4. Lunch on the promenade, then the funicular. Eat near the Grandhotel Pupp, then take the funicular behind it up to the Diana tower for the view down the valley.
5. Walk back down through the woods. The marked path from Diana passes Jelení skok and returns you to the Pupp end of the promenade in about 40 minutes.
6. Evening: a Becherovka. The tasting at the visitor centre if you booked it, or simply a glass on the promenade once the day-trippers have gone.

Where to stay in Karlovy Vary

Stay in the spa district along the Teplá if you can, because the whole point of Karlovy Vary is walking out of your door onto the promenade. The valley between Dvořákovy sady and the Grandhotel Pupp holds most of the spa hotels, and everything in this guide is within 25 minutes of it on foot.

Three hotels are landmarks in their own right. The Grandhotel Pupp, built between 1896 and 1907 in neo-Baroque style and standing at the top of the promenade, is the one that appears in Casino Royale and has hosted the film festival’s guests for decades. The Hotel Imperial sits above the town with its own funicular down to the springs. Carlsbad Plaza is the medical-spa option, built into a 19th-century building and organised around treatment programmes rather than sightseeing.

Outside the valley, Stará Role and Cihelny both put you near golf courses at the cost of a bus ride, and rooms are cheaper. For a family or a stay of several nights an apartment works out better than a spa hotel room, and our guide to prices in Czechia sets out what a night here costs against Prague.

What to eat and drink in Karlovy Vary

Eat Czech and drink the local herbal liqueur, because that is what the town does. Guláš with bread or potato dumplings, svíčková and schnitzel are on every menu along the promenade, and our guide to Czech comfort food goes further into the dishes.

Two things are Karlovy Vary’s own. Oplatky, the spa wafers, are thin discs the size of a side plate, pressed hot and filled with sugar, hazelnut or chocolate, and they are sold from stalls all along the colonnades. Becherovka, the herbal liqueur invented here in 1807, is drunk cold as an aperitif or a digestif, and mixed with tonic it becomes a Beton, which is what you will be offered if you ask for something local.

Grandrestaurant Pupp inside the Grandhotel is the formal option, and the promenade holds the rest at every price. Prices in the spa district run above the Czech average, as our prices guide sets out, so walking one street back from the river is worth doing here as much as in Prague.

How to get to Karlovy Vary

Come from Prague by coach. Direct services run from Prague’s Florenc bus station to Karlovy Vary in about two and a quarter hours, several times an hour at peak times, and the advance fare is low. It is the fastest and cheapest way in.

Compare coaches and trains to Karlovy Vary across the operators in one search, because RegioJet, FlixBus and the state railway all run the corridor at different prices. The train takes over three hours because the line winds through the hills, so take it only for the scenery.

Driving from Prague takes about an hour and 45 minutes on the D6 and needs a motorway vignette, which is digital and bought online. From Germany, Karlovy Vary sits about an hour from the border crossings near Cheb and roughly two and a half hours from Nuremberg or Dresden.

Does Karlovy Vary have an airport?

Karlovy Vary Airport exists but is not a way into the town for most people. It handles a handful of routes and very few flights, and its scheduled traffic has been minimal since the Russian charter market that sustained it disappeared.

Fly into Prague instead and take the coach. Compare flights into Prague as soon as your dates are set, then add the two-and-a-quarter-hour coach leg. There is no direct bus from Prague Airport to Karlovy Vary, so you change in the city.

Getting around Karlovy Vary

Walk. The spa district is pedestrianised and closed to most traffic, and everything on this page except Loket, the Moser glassworks and the airport is reachable on foot from the Teplá promenade.

City buses cover the outer districts and the bus station, the Diana funicular climbs from behind the Grandhotel Pupp, and the Imperial has a second funicular of its own. Driving into the spa zone is restricted, so if you arrive by car, park outside it and walk in. Our guide to getting around Czechia covers the intercity side.

Karlovy Vary in brief

The town’s basics are set out below.

Charles IV founded the town around 1370 after his hunting party found the springs, and it grew steadily as a cure resort through the 18th and 19th centuries. Its high season was the century before the First World War, when Central European and Russian society came for the waters and built most of what you now walk past. The German-speaking population was expelled after 1945 and the town was resettled; the spa function survived both that and the communist period, and the UNESCO inscription in 2021 recognised the architecture that came out of it.

Karlovy Vary questions

Is Karlovy Vary worth visiting?

Karlovy Vary is worth a day for its colonnades, springs and 19th-century spa architecture, now UNESCO-listed. It is not a city break in the Prague sense; it is a walkable valley of a town where the activity is drinking mineral water and looking at buildings, and that is either exactly what you want or not.

Can you drink the water in Karlovy Vary?

Yes, and it is free. Fill a spa cup at the taps in the colonnades and sip as you walk. The water is warm, salty and strongly mineral, and it acts as a laxative in quantity, so go gently on a first visit.

How far is Karlovy Vary from Prague?

Karlovy Vary is about 125 km (77.7 mi) west of Prague, roughly two and a quarter hours by direct coach from Florenc, an hour and 45 minutes by car on the D6, and over three hours by train.

Is Karlovy Vary expensive?

Karlovy Vary’s spa district prices above the Czech average and below Prague’s centre, and the spa hotels are the expensive part. The colonnades, the springs, the parks and the viewpoints are all free, so a day here costs little beyond food and one funicular ticket.

What is Becherovka?

Becherovka is the herbal liqueur invented in Karlovy Vary in 1807 and still made here, drunk cold as an aperitif or digestif and mixed with tonic as a Beton. Locals call it the town’s thirteenth spring. The Home of Becherovka visitor centre runs hourly tours with a tasting from 290 Kč.

Is Karlovy Vary good for children?

Partly. The Diana funicular, the butterfly house and mini zoo at the top, the woodland trails and Loket Castle all work with children, but the colonnades, the drinking cure and the spa hotels are aimed squarely at adults. One day suits families better than two.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

Five details make a Karlovy Vary trip work, and they are listed below with the most important first.

1. Check the Hot Spring Colonnade before a winter visit. Vřídelní kolonáda closes for a maintenance shutdown each winter and normally reopens on 16 February, and work on the hot-spring water distribution system ran through the summer of 2026. It is the one attraction in town whose closure would change your day.
2. Buy the cup, then drink for nothing. A porcelain spa cup with the flat drinking handle costs a few hundred koruna in any shop on the promenade, and every spring tap and bowl in every colonnade is then free. Inside the Hot Spring Colonnade the water is served at about 50°C and 30°C in separate bowls, so start at the cooler one.
3. Book the Becherovka tour, do not walk in. Tours run hourly from Tuesday to Sunday, 9am to 5pm, from 290 Kč, and each group is capped at 10 people. Turning up on a summer afternoon means waiting for a slot or missing it.
4. Treat the airport as if it were not there. Karlovy Vary Airport runs a handful of flights on a couple of routes. Fly to Prague and take the direct coach from Florenc, which takes about two and a quarter hours and costs a fraction of a transfer.
5. Avoid the first half of July unless you want the film festival. The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival fills every room in the valley and lifts prices with it. Come for it on purpose, or come in May, June, September or the Christmas market weeks instead, when the promenade is quiet and the Christmas markets in Prague are an easy add-on.

Karlovy Vary pairs naturally with the rest of west Bohemia: see our guides to Plzeň and the brewery an hour and a half south, to Prague two and a quarter hours east, and to the wider set of Czech destinations.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the team covers Czechia for independent travellers, including the spa hotels and apartments of Karlovy Vary, the colonnades and springs, the Becherovka and Moser tours worth booking, and the coaches and car hire that get you there, and updates this page when prices, opening rules and closures change.