Úštěk – Kunc Vladimír (2025)

This Czech-language book presents Úštěk and its surrounding region, a picturesque landscape in northern Bohemia between the Český středohoří and Kokořínsko protected landscape areas. Set on a sandstone promontory, the historic town appears like a jewel in a royal crown, attracting tourists, painters and filmmakers with its distinctive atmosphere and picturesque corners. Views from the realm of birds reveal a place where time seems to have stopped. Its town walls, three-storey sandstone cellars and Pikartská Tower evoke the Middle Ages, while the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul with its deanery recalls the Baroque period. A castle once converted into a malt house and brewery hints at the town’s faded former glory. Surrounded by extensive forests, meadows, hop fields and farmland, as well as the 75-hectare surface of Lake Chmelař, the landscape changes with the seasons: spring brings blossom and bright green, summer fills meadows and gardens with flowers, autumn covers the countryside in vivid colours, sometimes veiled in milky mist, and winter lays a white blanket of snow over it.