Žatec and the Landscape of Saaz Hops

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The Cultural Landscape of Žatec and Saaz Hops: A UNESCO World Heritage Site

The picturesque town of Žatec, nestled along the banks of the Ohře River in the Czech Republic, boasts a rich history deeply intertwined with the cultivation and trade of one of the world's most esteemed hop varieties – Saaz hops. This unique cultural landscape, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2023, offers a captivating glimpse into the evolution of hop farming, processing, and trading practices spanning seven centuries.

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UNESCO Description of the World Heritage Site

This cultural landscape has been shaped for centuries by the living tradition of cultivating and trading the world’s most renowned hop variety, used in beer production around the globe. The property includes particularly fertile hop fields near the river Ohře that have been farmed continuously for hundreds of years, as well as historic villages and buildings used for processing hops. The urban component of the property is represented by the medieval centre of Žatec with its southern extension, known as the “Prague Suburb” (Pražské předměstí) including numerous specific 19th to 20th-century industrial structures. Together, these illustrate the evolution of the agro-industrial processes and socio-economic system of growing, drying, certifying, and trading hops from the Late Middle Ages to the present.

UNESCO Justification of the World Heritage Site

Criterion (iii): Žatec and the Landscape of Saaz Hops bears exceptional testimony to a strong centuries-long cultural tradition of growing and processing the world’s most renown hops variety. Evidence of this testimony is found in the spatial configurations, urban patterns and buildings of this evolved and continuing cultural landscape. The town of Žatec became a globally recognised centre of hops in the 19th century as a result of innovations in hop production and flourishing global trade undertaken by local Czech, German and Jewish communities. This renown continues to the present day. The exceptional testimony of this cultural landscape is expressed in its traditional hop fields and buildings used for drying, packing, certifying and storing hops, as well as the related administrative, cultural and religious buildings.

Criterion (iv): Žatec and the Landscape of Saaz Hops is an outstanding example of a monoculture landscape. Associated with hop growing and processing in both rural and urban environments over a period of more than 700 years, the property includes outstanding examples of agricultural landscapes, buildings, architectural and technological ensembles. These examples illustrate various methods of hop breeding, drying, preservation, packaging and quality certification that were developed here since the Late Middle Ages and climaxed in the 19th and early 20th century. The rural landscape is particularly defined by hop fields, with their typical trellises of poles and wires. It also includes rural settlements with preserved farm buildings and barns where hops were dried and stored, and the former residence of the local landlord, the Stekník Chateau, which is a dominant landmark in the landscape as it rises above the still-used historic hop fields. The urban centre of this hop-growing landscape is the town of Žatec, with its municipal warehouses, hop drying kilns, sulphuring chambers, and hop packaging and certification facilities. The town’s exceptional skyline is accentuated by the vertical dominants of the hop-drying kilns and the tall chimneys of the sulphuring chambers.

Criterion (v): Žatec and the Landscape of Saaz Hops is an outstanding example of a traditional agricultural landscape and traditional human settlements related to growing a crop with very special requirements for climate, cultivation and processing. It illustrates continual interactions between people and their environment over a very long period of time in a well-preserved example of the cultural tradition of hop breeding, cultivation and processing in Europe. The technical knowhow and skills developed and refined here are well demonstrated by the hop fields with their characteristic trellises, drying kilns and other hop-related facilities that were built in the rural area. The processing of the hops grown here had a defining influence on the town of Žatec and its Prague Suburb, where very specific typologies of industrial facilities were created by communities associated with the hop processing business, as well as the residential buildings, educational and religious institutions and amenity centres needed to support this agro-industrial system.

Encyclopedia Record: Žatec

Žatec is a town in Louny District in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 19,000 inhabitants. It lies on the Ohře River. Žatec is famous for an over-700-year-long tradition of growing Saaz noble hops used by several breweries. Žatec and the Landscape of Saaz Hops was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023. The historic town centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument reservation and partly also as an urban monument zone.

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