Kudowa-Zdrój

Kudowa-Zdrój, a town of approximately 10 000 inhabitants, occupies 33.9 km² in the foothills of the Table Mountains on the Polish–Czech border, some 40 km west of Kłodzko and 140 km from Prague. Its setting in a valley through which the Bystra stream flows, at altitudes between 370 m and 420 m above sea level, affords it a milder microclimate than that of the adjacent Kłodzko Valley. First recorded in 1448 under the name Lipolitov, the settlement underwent successive renamings—Chudoba, Kudoba and, from 1945, Kudowa-Zdrój—reflecting its passage from Bohemian to Prussian, then German, and finally Polish sovereignty. From its earliest mention by Henry the Elder to its modern incarnation as a premier health resort, Kudowa-Zdrój’s identity has been shaped by its curative mineral springs, strategic location at a crossroads of cultures and its proximity to the sculpted terrain of the Stołowe Mountains.

The valley in which Kudowa-Zdrój lies forms a natural corridor between the Stołowe Mountains and the Orlické Foothills. Known as the Kudowa Depression, this cleft channels the Bystra stream toward the Metuje and ultimately the Elbe, ushering waters born of mountain snowmelt and precipitation through an ecologically varied landscape. The southern exposure of the slopes at the town’s edge tempers the winters and encourages extended periods of sunshine; between 1976 and 1990 the annual mean temperature stood at 7.1 °C, with July averages of 16.4 °C and January lows of −3.0 °C. Annual precipitation totals near 618 mm, peaking in July, while the longest snow cover—typically from November through April—averages sixty days per year, with January counting some twenty-two days of snow. South-westerly and southerly breezes prevail, ensuring that air pollution remains below health-resort thresholds, a fact borne out by studies of 1972–1973 that attributed these salutary conditions to the town’s topography.

By the late 16th century, the healing properties of Kudowa’s mineral waters were sufficiently renowned to draw official notice. Chronicles of 1580, penned by Louis of Náchod, mention the springs under the name Cermenske Lazne. A Protestant monk, G. Aelurius, lauded the waters in his 1625 treatise “Glaciografia,” extolling both their flavor and their therapeutic efficacy for heart and circulatory ailments. From those early days, the springs have defined the town’s vocation. In 1847 some three hundred patients sought relief there. Within a decade, chemist Adolf Duflos’s analysis confirmed the waters’ unique composition, and the physician J. Jacob promoted their use for cardiovascular conditions. By 1900 annual visitors had swelled to 4 150, drawn by the promise of arsenic-enriched and iron-bearing waters flowing from the earth.

The spa’s evolution owed much to transportation and industrial advances under Prussian rule. After the region passed from Bohemian to Prussian hands in 1742, the development of a railway link to Glatz (present-day Kłodzko) and the installation of a local power plant accelerated the town’s growth. From 1818 until 1945 the locality bore the name Bad Kudowa, and from 1871 to 1945 formed part of the German Empire. Investment by the Gebrüder Martin und Paul Polka company in 1920 consolidated the town’s largest spa facilities, attracting illustrious guests such as Winston Churchill and Field Marshal Helmut von Moltke. Between 1911 and 1931 Raphael Friedeberg practiced at the spa, continuing the tradition of medical expertise that had defined Kudowa-Zdrój for centuries. The interwar German administration sought to erase traces of Slavic heritage through toponymic reforms, yet the district of Zakrze retained its name, hinting at enduring local ties to older cultural currents.

In the shadow of global conflict, Kudowa-Zdrój’s tranquil rit­es of healing were shattered by the Second World War. The Germans established a subcamp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in the Zakrze district, interning Jewish women and forcing Italian prisoners of war into labor. Among these was Luigi Baldan, whose courageous efforts to bring food to the women—supplied covertly by Polish and Czech allies—culminated in his escape and concealment by Czech partisans. Such episodes of compassion stand in harrowing relief against the camp’s brutality. After 1945, the town’s German populace was expelled under the Potsdam Agreement and replaced by Polish settlers, many uprooted from eastern territories annexed by the Soviet Union. For the first time it was granted municipal rights in its nearly five-century history.

The cultural fabric of postwar Kudowa-Zdrój was further enriched by an influx of ethnic Czechs, who, though their numbers dwindled by 1960, maintained German- and Czech-language schools into the 1950s. Refugees from the Greek Civil War found employment at the Zakrze textile factory, adding Mediterranean threads to the community’s demographic tapestry. In 1962 the town inaugurated the International Moniuszko Festival, honoring Stanisław Moniuszko, the father of Polish national opera. Each May, visitors gather in the spa park’s concert pavilion to hear choral and orchestral works, reinforcing the town’s dual identity as both health resort and cultural hub.

The Spa Park, laid out in revivalist 17th-century style and spanning several hectares, remains the heart of Kudowa-Zdrój’s civic life. Winding paths threaded through beds of perennial flora, giant pond, statuary and an open-air pavilion house a pump room where three mineral springs may be sampled. The Marchlewski and Śniadecki springs flow within the pavilion, while the Moniuszko spring bubbles near the pond without enclosure or fee. Arsenic-rich waters, once bottled by spa enterprises, now nourish guests who stroll beneath maples, lindens and exotic plantings introduced during the late nineteenth-century boom.

Beyond the Spa Park, the town’s built heritage reflects both regional traditions and the influences of successive regimes. The parish church of St. Catherine, erected in 1679 and remodelled in the nineteenth century, anchors one side of the downtown. A wooden village belfry of the nineteenth century and a promenade hall dating to 1906 testify to the town’s prosperity under German administration. Guesthouses and sanatoriums, many with neoclassical facades or art-nouveau details, line Zdrojowa Street. Across the Bystra in the Czermna district, the Church of St. Bartholomew, founded in 1384 and rebuilt in later centuries, presides over a chamber whose walls are lined with human skulls and bones. This Chapel of Skulls, one of only three in Europe, solemnly commemorates the victims of the Thirty Years’ War and subsequent plagues, their rearranged remains forming patterns of Byzantine geometry under vaulted arches.

A short distance from the ossuary, a mechanical nativity scene crafted between 1904 and 1924 offers another form of marvel. Two hundred and fifty moving lime-wood figures enact biblical narratives amid scribed backdrops, their intricate motions brought to life by hidden clockwork. Further afield, the Heritage Park in Pstrążna showcases an open-air museum of Sudeten-foothill folk culture. Rustic timber houses and barns from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been reassembled amid pastureland; their interiors preserve original furnishings, tools and household implements. The quarterly journal “Pamiętnik Kudowski,” published by the museum, continues the region’s long tradition of recording local life.

Kudowa-Zdrój also maintains institutions devoted to children’s wonder and natural science. The Toy Museum collects playthings from across Europe and beyond, tracing technological and stylistic evolutions in miniature. The former Frog Museum, reborn as the Ecocentre of the Stołowe Mountains National Park, presents both live exhibits and educational displays on the region’s amphibian fauna, alongside geological specimens from the eroded sandstone formations of the neighbouring peaks.

The town’s environs include geological marvels: Szczeliniec Wielki, the highest summit of the Table Mountains, rises in sandstone tiers above forests, its summit plateau carved into mazes of crevices and ledges. Błędne Skały, or the Errant Rocks, form a labyrinthine network of narrow passages and cavernous hollows, sculpted by millennia of wind and rain into turrets and columns. Pilgrims journey to the Basilica of Wambierzyce, dubbed “Silesian Jerusalem” for its elongated calvary and baroque interior, where carved whitewood altarpieces and chapels commemorate Marian devotion. The Bear Cave in Kletno, hollowed in marbleized limestone, shelters stalactites and subterranean pools, a cool contrast to the sunlit brambles above.

Transport arteries bind these attractions to the town’s pulse. The national road no. 8, part of European route E67 linking Prague to Helsinki, conveys visitors eastward to Wrocław, Warsaw and beyond. Provincial road no. 387 threads northward toward Ścinawka Górna. A rail spur to Kłodzko offers connections to the broader Polish network. Until 2007 four border crossings to Náchod lay open; their closure under the Schengen Agreement was offset by the freedom of movement across the Czech frontier, now a three-kilometre stroll from the town centre to neighbouring Słone.

In recent decades Kudowa-Zdrój has balanced preservation with adaptation. An indoor swimming pool added in 2002 complements treatments in sanatoriums that offer inhalation, peloid and kinesiotherapeutic regimens. Guesthouses and hotels, some in restored villas, provide accommodation from modest pensions to four-star establishments. Bicycle paths radiate toward mountain trails, and local guides organize walking tours of geological, historical and architectural significance. The pulse of the spa town stretches beyond its parks, encompassing the small shops of herbalists, galleries of regional crafts and cafés where visitors sample gingerbread and ginger-spiced herbal infusions drawn from native raspberries and regrown mountain herbs.

Yet amid its evolution, Kudowa-Zdrój retains the quiet dignity that first drew seekers of health and respite. The amber tones of autumn light the terraces of the Spa Park; winter’s hush blankets the ossuary in frost; spring stirs the needle-leaved pines that flank the promenades. Summer’s sun warms the sandstone peaks, beckoning hikers from the mineral springs to the highland trails. Over five centuries of change, the town has amassed layers of human endeavor—medicinal, industrial, religious and cultural—each informing the next generation’s sense of place. In this valley on the border, where water, stone and story converge, Kudowa-Zdrój continues to offer restoration to body, mind and memory, affirming its status as one of Europe’s most venerable spa towns.