Park Colonnade
Begin under the white iron arcades of the Park Colonnade, one of the five main colonnades of Karlovy Vary. It is a two-armed walkway 50 m long, carried on slender Corinthian columns, with a six-sided pavilion at each corner. Look closely at the columns: every piece is cast iron, made at Prince Salm's Marian ironworks in Blansko and assembled in neo-Renaissance style.
The Viennese architects Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer designed it, and it went up in 1880 and 1881. Back then it was a promenade leading to the Blansko Pavilion and its summer restaurant. The pavilion was pulled down in 1966 to make room for the neighbouring Dvořák Gardens, so the colonnade now stands on its own. For more than a century it received nothing but paint, twelve coats in all; only in 2004 were broken and missing castings restored, the stone base repaired and the roof covered in new slate.
This is where you take your first sip. The colonnade serves the Garden Spring, although its actual outlet lies inside the Military Spa Sanatorium. In the western pavilion you find the Snake Spring, discovered in the late 1980s by the spa hydrogeologist Vylita and opened to the public on 10 July 2004. At 30 °C it is one of the cooler springs, and many consider it the tastiest in town. If warm mineral water is new to you, start with this one.
Fellner and Helmer will turn up again later, at the Grand Hotel Pupp. For now, walk 400 m, about 6 minutes, to the Mill Colonnade, the building that became a symbol of the town.
