Jablonec

A hillside town in northern Bohemia, and for centuries one of the great homes of Czech glass and beads.

Where it is

Jablonec nad Nisou sits in the Jizera Mountains, about an hour and a half from Prague. It is a proper town with a square, tram lines, cafés — and, if you know where to look, beads everywhere.

Still water at dusk, a stone dam wall with a metal railing, and tall conifers reflected in the reservoir — The reservoir in Jablonec nad Nisou.

A short glass story

Glassmaking grew up in these mountains centuries ago, drawn by wood for the furnaces and good sand. By the 1700s and 1800s the area around Jablonec (once known as Gablonz) had become famous for beads, buttons and costume jewellery shipped all over the world.

Small family workshops and larger factories sat side by side. Pressed beads, cut beads, fire-polished glass, lamp-work, waxed pearls — many of the techniques bead lovers still seek out today were refined here.

Vintage Jablonec square with the town-hall clock tower

Old postcard of the market square in Jablonec

Cottage workshops

At its height this was a true cottage industry. Family workshops dotted the hills around Jablonec — by around 1900 there were nearly 600 factories and works in the area, and by the 1930s several thousand registered firms. Many were home-based makers, melting glass over a flame at a wooden bench.

Only a handful remain in original working order — still looking and running much as they did a century ago. On our tours we sometimes visit one of these last working cottage factories.

Visitors outside a traditional cottage glass factory with tall brick chimneys near Jablonec — Outside one of the last cottage factories still in original working condition — those tall chimneys give the furnaces away.

Craftswoman lampworking glass beads at a traditional workshop bench — Inside: lampwork at the bench — glass rods, metal moulds, and a flame that has been doing this job for generations.

Why bead people still come

The industry has changed, but the craft has not disappeared. You can still visit makers, poke through antique shops, walk into the Museum of Glass and Jewellery, and watch glass being pressed, cut and lamp-worked.

That is why we base our holidays here. It is not a theme park. It is a living bead town.

Old postcard of the villa quarter and church in Jablonec

Traditional Czech black glass jewellery set by Stanislav Jiroš — necklace and matching earrings — Černá bižuterie

A friend of ours, Stanislav Jiroš, still makes traditional Czech black glass jewellery by hand near here. Visit his Černá bižuterie site if you’d like to see more.

The museum

The Museum of Glass and Jewellery is the best place to start if you want the story in one visit — how Czech bead and glass-making grew from the 18th century onward, and how Jablonec became a name bead people still recognise.

Vintage market day in the Jablonec square

Step back in time

When the bead and glass trade was booming here in the late 1800s and early 1900s, visitors and local mountain societies also climbed the hills for the view. Lookout towers went up on the ridges around Jablonec — places to take in the Jizera Mountains and the towns below. They are still there today, and on our holidays we love showing guests this landscape as well as the workshops.

Brought to life from a real Victorian-era photograph (or poster) of one of the hillside viewpoints and visitor places near here from about a hundred years ago — not a town square, and not archival film, but the original image is genuine.

Lookouts in the hills

Štěpánka stands on Hvězda above Příchovice, near Kořenov. Prince Camille Rohan began this neo-Gothic stone tower in 1847 in honour of Archduke Stephen, patron of the nearby Imperial Road. Building stopped with only the lower part finished; after about forty years the Mountain Association completed it, and it opened in 1892. At about 24 metres it is the oldest lookout tower in the Jizera Mountains, with views toward the Jizera and Giant Mountains and other ranges beyond.

Slovanka, above the Hrabětice / Lučany nad Nisou area at about 820 metres, is an iron lookout put up in 1887. Mountain Association sections (including Jablonec) had an iron structure brought from a Vienna exhibition and raised it here. It is the oldest iron lookout tower in the Czech lands. After later decline it was renovated and reopened in 2000, and it is now a technical monument.

Černá Studnice, a peak a few kilometres south-east of Jablonec, had a simple rock viewpoint with a platform and railing prepared in 1885 by the Liberec German Mountain Association. Jablonec walkers later formed their own Mountain Association for Jablonec and surroundings (1903), ran a design competition won by architect Robert Hemmrich, and with builder Corazza raised a granite tower about 26 metres high. It opened on 14 August 1905, with a large public celebration. From its galleries you look out over Jablonec and the surrounding mountains.

Come for the beads — and leave a little time for the hills. The same slopes that fed the furnaces still reward a climb.

Come and see it with us

We live near Prague and know the back streets, the workshops and the shops worth the dust on your fingers. Have a look at tour inspiration, or send a message and tell us what you want to see.

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