UNESCO World Heritage Site Karlovy Vary and its geotourism development opportunities linked with architecture

Abstract

Today’s appearance of spa towns in the country is represented by the architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries. We mainly find elements of empire, neo-renaissance, and art nouveau in them. Even Karlovy Vary, even though its history goes back to the past, presents itself with this architecture. Even though the spa was here at the very beginning of the city’s foundation, nothing was left of the original buildings due to natural disasters. If they were not natural disasters, they were also remediation that freed up space for the construction of new buildings. Apart from hotel buildings, typical objects of spa architecture are mainly spa buildings and pavilions, construction modifications of springs or colonnades. An essential part of these centres is also greenery and water supplements that balance the mass of these buildings. However, the favourable geological, especially hydrogeological and geomorphological conditions of these locations play the most important role for the development of the spa industry. From the point of view of tourism in Karlovy Vary, the aim of this work is to connect the classic spa tourism of this city, which was already supplemented by film tourism in the middle of the 20th century with geotourism.