The City

The town of Liberec lies in a basin between the Ještěd ridge and Jizera mountains. A small settlement, first referred to in 1352, grew into a small town during the 15th century and the first half of the 16th century. This was confirmed in writing by the Emperor Rudolf II in 1577. The beginning of the 19th century brought the development of the textile industry and consequently also industrial architecture, which helped Liberec gain the legal status of an independent town.

Today Liberec is a metropolitan town of 100 000 inhabitants in the north east of Bohemia, just less than an hour’s motorway drive from Prague. Liberec is a town with a rich cultural tradition, contemporary scene and town’s architecture, for example, the new renaissance town hall, the theatres or the specular villas on Masarykova třída. The ability of Liberec’s contemporary architects is evident from the fact that Karel Hubáček was awarded the prestigious Perret Prize for his design for the peak of mount Ještěd.

The list of cultural facilities wouldn‘t be complete without the F.X.Šaldy Theatre (opera, drama, balet), The Naive Theatre, The North Bohemian Museum, several galleries, the oldest ZOO in the Czech Republic, the recently modernised Botanical gardens and we mustn‘t forget the unique shopping and leisure centre Babylon.

The most distinct name for Liberec is town of sport and recreation with good conditions for hiking downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, mountain-climbing, biking in terrain of Jizera mountains. There are a lot of pubs in the town center, some of which offer pleasant seating in gardens under the trees in the summer moths. For more information visit http://www.visitliberec.eu/en/.