Ještěd Tower — observation tower
Image by ivabalk from Pixabay

Ještěd Tower

Ještěd

  • Elevation1,012 m
  • 2 min read
  • 50.733° N 14.985° E

Interesting facts

  • Eleven architects and teams entered the 1963 design competition, and Hubáček's entry was the only one to meet both the hotel and transmitter briefs.
  • The transmitter began broadcasting on 1 May 1971, two years before the hotel and restaurant were finished.
  • The whole building cost 64 million Czechoslovak crowns at 1973 prices.
  • An 800 kg ring-shaped pendulum hung at the very top of the mast damps the swaying caused by the summit winds.
  • The laminate panels around the antennas are joined without any metal fittings, because metal would block the broadcast signals.
  • The outer shell around the restaurant and hotel floors is made of 64 panels of anodised aluminium set in a cone.
  • Glass artists Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová set eight glass emblems into the concrete shaft, which Hubáček likened to fallen meteorites.
  • Several of its engineering solutions, including the cladding and the wind damper, were protected by Czechoslovak patents and later reused on other towers.
  • In 2000 it was named the most important Czech building of the 20th century.
  • Its silhouette appears on the flag and coat of arms of the Liberec Region and in the logo of the football club FC Slovan Liberec.

Why it is worth it

From almost anywhere in Liberec you can see it: on the bare summit of Ještěd, 1,012 metres up and about six kilometres from the town centre, stands a silver cone that looks less like a building than like something that has landed. It is a television transmitter and a mountain hotel folded into a single shape — a hyperboloid of reinforced concrete about 94 metres tall, clad in aluminium and glass. The curve is not a stylistic whim: it continues the silhouette of the mountain into the sky, and it is built to withstand the harsh climate of an exposed summit.

It exists because of a fire. The older wooden mountain hotel on the summit burned down in January 1963, and its replacement was entrusted to Karel Hubáček, one of the founders of the Liberec architectural studio SIAL. Working with the structural engineer Zdeněk Patrman, he designed the tower between 1963 and 1966; construction took until 1973, and the building opened on 9 July that year. Even before it was finished, Hubáček received the Auguste Perret Prize of the International Union of Architects in 1969 for the creative use of technology in architecture.

The hotel and restaurant occupy the lowest levels of the cone, furnished to designs by Otakar Binar, and the interior is as much a period piece as the shell. From the ground-floor gallery and the restaurant above it, the view runs over Liberec and the surrounding hills as far as Germany and Poland. The building was declared a Czech national cultural monument in 2006, and since 2007 it has been on the country's tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage.

It is worth coming at different times of day. At dusk the aluminium skin takes on the colour of the sky, and in winter the whole summit can look as if it were made of ice. The hotel still takes guests, so it is possible to sleep inside the sculpture.

Getting there

Ještěd rises about 6 km south-west of the centre of Liberec in northern Bohemia. The nearest major airport is Václav Havel Airport Prague (PRG), about 87 km away. The summit is reached by road — public parking is below the top, with a walk of up to about 45 minutes, while the parking at the summit is for hotel guests — or by several marked hiking trails, including a popular route from Horní Hanychov on the edge of Liberec.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in the Czech Republic 32The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in the Czech Republic 5The Most Spectacular Modern Observation Towers 7The Most Beautiful Buildings in the Czech Republic 8The Most Spectacular Modern Viewpoints 9The Most Spectacular Observation Towers 12The Most Beautiful Modern Squares, Streets and Monuments 15The Most Spectacular Viewpoints 33The Most Beautiful Modern Buildings 50The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments 173The Most Beautiful Buildings 286

From the encyclopaedia

Ještěd Tower is a television transmitter on top of Mount Ještěd near Liberec in the Czech Republic. Measuring 94 m (308 ft), it is made of reinforced concrete shaped in a "hyperboloid" form. The tower was designed by architect Karel Hubáček, who was assisted by Zdeněk Patrman, involved in building statics, and by Otakar Binar, who designed the interior furnishing. It took the team three years to finalize the structure design (1963–1966). The construction itself took seven years to finish (1966–1973).

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