Health Czech

Mark Twain called Marienbad in Czechia ‘the most charming town on the Continent, as pretty as can be wished’. Fellow American,Thomas Edison, claimed there was ‘no more beautiful spa in the world’.

Visit this World Heritage-listed town and you’ll find little reason to disagree. Dazzling fin-de-siècle architecture has been restored in buttercup-yellow and cream colours that stand out against pine-covered hillsides. Buildings as sumptuous as wedding cakes swell with curved balconies and sit amid manicured lawns and flowerbeds.

The mineral waters of this pretty town were harnessed in the early nineteenth century after they began to attract the aristocracy. Mariánské Lázně entered its prime in the late century, when concerts, gambling, dancing and gossip flourished. Artists and writers such as Chopin, Liszt, Ibsen, Wagner and Kafka retreated there, turning the wellness town into a cultural centre.

The prestigious Chopin Festival in August remains a highlight of the Czech social calendar. Visit the small Fryderyk Chopin Memorial Museum and you can listen to crackly recordings of the great composer playing the piano.

The town has a short past. The Town Museum, set up in an elegant former guesthouse where leading German writer Goethe once stayed, offers a good overview of how Mariánské Lázně developed and the famous people who hobnobbed there.

Its reputation as Europe’s most fashionable spa resort was sealed by King Edward VII of England, who came for nine seasons and developed the golf course. The corpulent monarch followed a desultory health regimen of Hungarian fish, fried eggplant and peaches, and gave up wine for water from Cross Spring.

His private, marble-floored bathing suite at New Spa (Nové Lázně) is unchanged; guests can wallow in the same copper bathtub.

New Spa remains one of the best of the town’s purpose-built hotel spas thanks to its serene architecture and sense of elegance and history. Two basement swimming pools are graced by soaring columns beneath elaborate vaulted ceilings.

Despite the opulence, treatments are no-nonsense, and masseuses pummel guests hard enough to make them squawk. Brace yourself for cold baths and blasts from hoses. If this is pampering, it’s pampering in the what’s-good-for-you tradition, which gives Mariánské Lázně more serious credentials than many European wellness towns.

Those here for cures rise early, take treatments before breakfast, then set off on walks. More treatments follow in the afternoons, and evenings are short. Many stay for two- or three-week regimens. Those wanting to avoid upmarket prices in spa hotels take to inexpensive public baths.

This austerity is what keeps Mariánské Lázně somewhat under the radar, as the town is less visited than Czechia’s other notable spa resort, Karlovy Vary (formerly Carlsbad).

It’s one of those increasingly rare European destinations that retains old-fashioned charm and has dodged an excess of souvenir shops, nightclubs and overdevelopment.

You certainly don’t have to participate in spartan health cures to appreciate Mariánské Lázně – although you could relax in warm baths that fizz with carbon dioxide and enjoy genteel massages afterwards.

Those avoiding treatments entirely should head to the Colonnade to watch passersby over coffee and pastries at one of the cafés. The treat most associated with Mariánské Lázně is a wafer sandwich with a middle layer of hazelnut and a chocolate coating.

For a place devoted to wellness you won’t go hungry. Czech food is hearty – thick soups, goulash, schnitzel, dumplings, and desserts smothered in plum sauce and whipped cream.

The Colonnade, built to harness the water of several springs, is the focus of Mariánské Lázně. The superb building of wrought iron and glass, Corinthian columns and frescoed ceilings resembles a Victorian train station or glasshouse.

In the afternoons and at twilight before dinner, locals and visitors arrive to stroll up and down. Many clutch specially designed mugs so they can sip the gassy water flowing from various Colonnade spouts, each promising different mineral content and purported benefits. The magnesium-rich Caroline Spring is said to be good for the heart and nerves, the calcium-laden Rudolf Spring for bones.

Prepare for an off-putting smell and strong taste, however – drinking these waters takes determination. Surely more enjoyable are the 250 jets of the Singing Fountain that erupt every other hour on the hour to the swelling music of various classical composers, although the music sometimes strays into anachronistic Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli songs.

At the end of the Colonnade, a map outlines walks through the hills and forests of the surroundings. These walks, ranked by their various degrees of strenuousness, have always been an integral part of the town’s health regimen, but anyone will enjoy them.

Mariánské Lázně was developed to be not just another spa town, of which Europe already had many, but an escape from the industrial age that promoted nostalgia for the simple country life away from urban hubbub.

The garden town is surrounded by parks and woodland that provide lovely winding walks with open vistas of pretty scenery. The air is crisp and clear and silver birches dance in the breeze. Hidden along forest trails are little Victorian-era monuments and pavilions from which to admire the views.

It might well be Mariánské Lázně’s setting rather than its water that rejuvenates. This is a little fairy-tale enclave seemingly immune to the passing of time, sure to make you feel better.