The Jested tower and Bohemian crystal — a mountain city at three borders
Liberec is the capital of the Czech-German-Polish borderland in northern Bohemia, built at the foot of the Jizera Mountains and dominated by the Jested tower — a hyperboloid construction atop a 1,012m peak that doubles as a TV transmitter and a rotating restaurant and has become one of the most iconic pieces of Czech 20th-century architecture. The city grew wealthy on linen and textile manufacturing in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was called the Manchester of Bohemia, and retains an impressive ring of Historicist municipal buildings from that era. The surrounding mountains are major c…
Liberec (German: Reichenberg) was predominantly German-speaking until the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans in 1945-1946. It was founded in the 16th century as a textile-manufacturing town and grew rapidly during the Industrial Revolution as the centre of Bohemia's linen and later cotton industry. In 1938 it was the first Czech city occupied by Nazi Germany after the Munich Agreement, as the de-facto capital of the Sudetenland. After WWII the German population was expelled and Czech settlers replaced them, fundamentally changing the city's character. The Jested tower, designed by Karel Hubáček…