Deštnice: Holiday Apartments and Holiday Homes

Deštnice combines the landscape of the Džbán Nature Park with a hop-growing history and architectural heritage. Among forests, fields and hop gardens are a late Baroque church, a hop museum, as well as technical features of the railway and water drainage.

Nature, Landscape and Trails

Deštnice is located in the Džbán Nature Park. The village is surrounded by extensive coniferous and mixed forests, interspersed with fields and hop gardens. A blue-marked hiking trail from Veletice railway station via Pravda to Líšťany passes through Sádek, a district of Deštnice.

Church and Local History

The Church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary in Deštnice is a late Baroque building dating from 1783. The church has a single nave and a rectangular layout, with a semicircular apse. The main altar was originally designed in the Rococo style and was remodelled in the 19th century.

Southeast of Deštnice stood the vanished settlement of Nedvídkov, also known as Nedvíkov or Medvídkov. It included a fortress and a manorial farm; during the course of the 15th century, the settlement disappeared under the rule of the Lobkowicz family.

Hop Culture and Museum

The Hop Museum is located in Deštnice within a farm complex and a former hop-drying kiln. It presents the history of the hop research station since 1926, as well as a photo gallery showing work in hop cultivation. The collection includes technical equipment, an original furnace and hop tokens for the quarter.

A breeding station for cereals and hops was founded in Deštnice in 1925. From 1 January 1926, Karel Osvald directed the breeding work at the agricultural experimental station in Deštnice; under his leadership, the first selection work on hops began in 1927.

Hop cultivation in Deštnice is documented by records from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. After European vineyards were destroyed by phylloxera, hops remained the most important crop in Deštnice; records from the 18th and 19th centuries ranked it among the highest-quality hops in the entire region. The quality of Czech hops was stabilised through the selection breeding of Osvald's hop clones. Three hop clones for different soil types bear the name Dr Osvald.

Technical Features

The technical features of Deštnice include two bridges arranged one above the other: a road bridge over a stream, with a railway bridge above it. Another notable feature within the municipality of Deštnice is a railway underpass in the railway embankment; the relevant section of the line dates from 1870.

The railway underpass in Deštnice is a small, 1 m wide viaduct tunnel that supports the railway line and also drains water from a woodland property through the tunnel into a gorge.

Other places: Brodec, Postoloprty, Peruc, Lipenec, Vršovice, Žiželice, Cítoliby, Petrohrad.

To the higher-level travel overview: Louny District.