Grandhotel Pupp

Few hotels carry as much continuous history as the Pupp, whose story begins in 1701 with the Saxony Hall on the banks of the Teplá river and runs through the confectioner Johann Georg Pupp, who pieced the estate together in the late eighteenth century. The neo-baroque building that stands today dominates the southern end of Karlovy Vary's spa colonnades, a wedding-cake landmark in a town of them.

The guest book reads like a history of Europe — Goethe, Beethoven and Paganini among the spa-goers of earlier centuries — and the hotel remains the ceremonial heart of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival each summer. Cinema returned the compliment: the Pupp's interiors informed scenes in Casino Royale, and film pilgrims still come to see the Grandhotel's ballroom and grand café for themselves.

As a stay, the Pupp offers high-ceilinged classical rooms, a proper spa drawing on the town's thermal-spring tradition, and the Becher's Bar for late evenings. Step outside and the colonnades, hot springs and forested walking trails of the spa town unfold along the river. It is less cutting-edge than western Europe's palace hotels and considerably better value — a living piece of Mitteleuropa.