Žatec and the Landscape of Saaz Hops
The number of Wikipedia languages with an article is our measure of how widely known a site is. Counts of visitors and wishes will appear once enough people use the app.
How it came to be
Žatec, Saaz in German, first appears in 1004 in the Latin chronicle of Thietmar of Merseburg. King Ottokar II granted it royal town privileges in 1265, and hop growing there was first documented in 1348. It has continued for more than 700 years.
In the 19th century the town's Czech, German and Jewish communities brought new methods to production and trade, and Žatec became a hop centre known worldwide. In the Prague Suburb south of the old town, municipal warehouses, drying kilns, sulphuring chambers and packing and certification buildings went up in the 19th and 20th centuries. At Stekník a large Baroque granary was converted into a hop kiln.
The town remained ethnically German until 1945, when its German inhabitants were expelled. Saaz hops are protected by a designation of origin, and the hop fields are protected under a 1996 Act on the Protection of Hops. The town and its hop landscape were inscribed in 2023.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s license. Prototype; may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).