Levín

A hilltop pottery townlet north of Úštěk — six hundred years of unbroken ceramic tradition, a round late-Baroque church on the square, and a 13th-century castle ruin above.

Levín is a městys the size of a village with the history of a town: for some six hundred years, without interruption, this hilltop settlement seven kilometres north of Úštěk has made pottery, and it once ranked among the significant ceramic centres of Central Europe. The tradition is alive — several workshops still fire and can be visited, and the village holds an annual pottery market. The square is dominated by an unusual round church of the Elevation of the Holy Cross (founded 1788, rebuilt 1798 after a fire), with a bell tower on the wooded knoll above — the knoll also carries the scant ruin of Levín castle, a 13th-century stronghold that likely perished in 1422 in the fighting around Žižka’s Kalich nearby.