Libochovice

A small town on the Ohře with one of Bohemia's finest early-baroque chateaux (1683–1690) — birthplace of the physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkyně — and Hazmburk filling the northern view.

Libochovice is dominated by its chateau: an early-baroque palace built 1683–1690 by the Italian architect Antonio della Porta for Gundakar von Dietrichstein, on the site of an older Renaissance seat, with a French parterre garden and a landscape park running down to the Ohře. Jan Evangelista Purkyně, the physiologist whose name is on cell biology worldwide, was born here in 1787 — the chateau keeps an exposition on him alongside its period interiors.

For walkers the town is the natural base of the Hazmburk country: shops and pubs on the square, a rail halt, the riverside park for a break, and Hazmburk‘s two towers standing over every northward view. The marked trail to the castle hill is about an hour.