Jested Tower, Liberec

Ještěd Tower is a 94-meter-tall television transmitter built on the top of Mount Ještěd near Liberec in the Czech Republic.

It is made of reinforced concrete shaped in a hyperboloid form. The tower's architect is 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).
The hyperboloid shape was chosen since it naturally extends the silhouette of the hill and, moreover, well resists the extreme climate conditions on the summit of Mount Ještěd. The design cleverly combines the operation of a mountain-top hotel and a television transmitter in one. The hotel and the restaurant are located in the lowest sections of the tower.

Before the construction of the current hotel, there were already two huts standing near the mountain summit: one was built in the middle of the 19th century and the other was added in the early 20th century. Both buildings had a wooden structure and both burned to the ground in the 1960s.

The tower is one of the dominant features of the North Bohemian landscape. The gallery on the found floor and the restaurant on the first floor offer views of much of Bohemia and parts of Poland and Germany. The tower silhouette appears on the region flag and the coat-of-arms, and on the local university's logo and on the logo of the local first-league soccer club Slovan Liberec. The building is also featured in the Czech movie Grandhotel based on book by Jaroslav Rudiš.

The tower has been on the list of the Czech cultural monuments since 1998, becoming a national cultural monument in 2006. In 2007 it was entered on the Tentative List of UNESCO World Heritage sites. In 1969 Karel Hubáček was awarded the prestigious Perret Prize of the International Union of Architects (UIA).
The monument is accessible by road and also by a cable car from the foot of the mountain.

A visit to Jested Tower represents just the start of the adventure when you use our Liberec trip planner to plot your vacation.
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