History of Castle Lužec

HISTORY OF LUŽEC CASTLE

Only 14 km away from Lužec Castle are Karlovy Vary, which has been the most popular Czech spa for 600 years, and has been visited by people from all over the world since time immemorial. People attributed healing power to Karlovy Vary’s thermal waters long before the city was founded. Karlovy Vary gained real fame at the end of the 14th century, when Charles IV. to the amazement of the court doctors, he treated his diseased limbs with thermal water from a local spring. At that time, rumors of a “place of power” spread throughout Europe, and over the following centuries Karlovy Vary physicians began to learn to improve various methods of hydrotherapy.

At the same time, the history of Lužec Castle began to be written, which was built by a royal order of the Czech King Charles IV. in the 14th century as a place of overnight stay and shelter from the vagaries of the weather during the royal hunt. Later, the chateau began to be used for the strategic deployment of the troops of Jan Žižka, who was fighting the Crusaders, and also served as the laboratory of the Czech King Rudolf II, who worked on the invention of the elixir of eternal youth in the castle halls.

The history of the Karlovy Vary spa and the Lužec chateau are closely intertwined, and they remember the times of decline and expansion. These places became most known during times of natural disasters and various wars. Karlovy Vary experienced its most tumultuous prosperity when a huge number of sanatoriums and sanatoriums were built here. The period after the First World War is the epoch of the prosperity of Lužec Castle, when in 1919 the local wealthy patron Paul Albrecht Weinkauf, captivated by old legends and the surrounding nature, commissioned the famous Munich architect Brendl to rebuild the old hunting lodge into a new castle. Later, after the death of this magnate, the castle is transferred to the property of the health insurance company, which established a sanatorium in this city.

The history of the Karlovy Vary spa is inextricably linked with the Second World War and the fascist occupation. But fortunately, this place received a special love of the German generals, during the war, the deserved Luftwaffe pilots and Hermann Göring himself were treated in the premises of the Lužec Castle sanatorium. After the war and during 1945, representatives of the Czechoslovak political elite recreationally in the chateau, and subsequently this spa was opened to the general Czechoslovak public.

The present of the Lužec Chateau begins to be written in 2010, when an extensive reconstruction turned this place into an elegant **** hotel styled in the atmosphere of the Charles IV hunting lodge. The area around the chateau has also changed. Gazebos and viewpoints, a park and a car park with 100 parking spaces were built. The pure nature and spring water, peace and amazing landscape, owned for centuries by important princes and kings, remain intact.

In 2014, Zámek Lužec SPA & Wellness Resort **** will present itself to its guests in a renewed form. Today it is a modern wellness hotel resort.