Lovosice

In the 13th century they belonged to the Lords of Lichtemburk, who sold them twice - in 1251 and 1272 - to the Cistercian monastery of Altzella in Meissen. Lovosice belonged to the monastery until 1415, when King Václav IV took it away and mortgaged it to Vlášek of Kladno. Perhaps in the 15th century a fortress was built in Lovosice, but very little is known about it. In 1510 the village was registered in the hands of the Šlejnic family, who probably had the fortress rebuilt into a Renaissance chateau sometime in the third quarter of the 16th century. In 1574 Lovosice was acquired by Jan of Wallenstein, whose son Adam had the village promoted to a town in 1600. In 1756, the first battle of the Seven Years' War was fought near Lovosice. Great defeated the Austrian army led by General von Brown. In 1783, the Schwarzenbergs acquired the Lovosice estate and held it until 1945. In the first half of the 19th century, the town suffered two disasters: a large fire in 1809 and a great flood in 1845, but it recovered from both. Since the middle of the 19th century Lovosice has been a free town. The industrial development of the town was supported by the railway, which connected it with Prague and Dresden in 1850-1851. This was followed by the founding of a chicory factory, a sugar factory, a brewery, and especially the first chemical factory in 1900. The town acquired its modern character through radical reconstruction in the second half of the 20th century, during which many older buildings were demolished, including the former Jewish ghetto. Although Lovosice is traditionally perceived as an industrial town, there are interesting monuments here: apart from the aforementioned castle, there is the Baroque St. Wenceslas Church from 1745 and the so-called Pfannschmidt Villa from 1887 with remarkable stucco interior decoration. Lovosice is a popular starting point to Lovoš and further into the Bohemian Central Highlands.