Nový Bor - the town of glass, green, and gardens. These are Nový Bor's truthful attributes that contribute to the picturesque local colour. The township is situated in Bohemia's north, some 9 km from the district centre of Česká Lípa and the population amounts to 12,000. Nový Bor is a young township because the decree by which it was promoted to town dates back only to 1757, thc year Empress Maria Theresa granted Earl Kinský's petition. Local history has always been linked with glass. The birth of industry was stimulated by the vicinity of the imperial road Prague-Rumburk-Zittau and the parallel railway built a century later. The town is seated into a forest-clad, hilly countryside at the slopes of the Lužické Hory mountains and the green pervades the entire place. Municipal road network was designed in a way so colossal that it comfortably accommodates all the traffic even today. A typical house is detached, dipped in the green of surrounding garden, and simple. This corresponds to the population mix which has always been dominated by men of the street, mainly craftsmen and glass tradesmen. The architectural design of a typical home speaks the samc language: the substructures are made of sandstone blocks with vaulted ceilings, while the superstructures of massive logs are topped with typical mansard roofs. Provoked by the glass trade expansion, the explosive growth had made the town swallow the closest village of Arnultovice. Arranged into a rectangular grid of streets cutting the green into the squares of gardens, the new houses were deslgned to provlde shelter and workplace to the home-working glass finishers-engravers, cutters and painters. To avoid long transports of semi- finished products, glass works and refineries were established locally. Production and finishing of glass thus merged with trade and the boom of that time provided means for large civic amenities and infrastructure of amazing standards for the period: water supply, sewerage system, a unique forest cemetery, a cogenerating heat and power plant, cinema, theatre, hotel, post office, bank, and glazier's school..: all of them still in service, some modernised, others surviving substantially unchanged. Today's Nový Bor has lost nothing of its allure. Many tiny painter's, engraver's and cutter's workshops certainly do not conceal what the place stands for-this is the town of glass. The Museum of Glass in the Peace Square shows unique collections and a survey of Nový Bor's glass manufacturing history in a permanent exhibition. No. 101, Peace Square is the house of Bedřich Egermann, an outstanding glass-maker, inventor of several refining techniques (red and yellow glazing), and entrepreneur. The Virgin Mary Assumption Church in the square is worth mentioning as a not unimportant monument of arts and contemporary building techniques. No. 45, T. G. Masaryk Street houses a nice concert and exhibition hall with ceiling paintings by Josef Navrátil. The forest cemetery is something unusual -tombstones seated among trees and bushes. Many rhododendrons are in flower here each spring. Nový Bor's nei.ghbourhood abounds with private weekend cottages and public leisure facilities, like the natural swimming pool at Sloup; ski pistes and well-kept cross-country sküng trails throughout the hilly, forest-clad countryside; the Sloup rock castle; "the Organ"-a rocky wall called Panská Skála near Kamenický Šenov which looks like a million organ pipes; sandstone rock labyrinths near Svojkov and Sloup; the Raven's Rocks between Nový Bor and Radvanec; and, last but not least, the nature reserve called Klíč (the Key) with a spectacular sea of stones, a sample of the special way the mountains of Lužické Hory are beautiful.

Museum of Glass

Virgin Mary Assumption Church

The Parkhotel

Aerial view of town centre

Aerial view of Nový Bor