Page 72 - UNESCO_Zatec_2021_A4

2. Description

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The historic building of a four-chamber hop kiln, Trnovany, 2017

In Žatec and its surroundings, generations of growers took last but not least, building large warehouses, where
turns in passing on experiences with optimal seasonal the harvested hops were stored to be later transported
practices and growing locations. Gratitude has to be to the place of use, permanently influenced the image
given to these growers for the fact that the cultivation of the nominated cultural landscape and settlements.
and processing of hops have been preserved to this day Žatec has become a world centre of hop trade, with the
and forms an exceptional picture of the local landscape need for the relevant administrative, communication,
and its natural historical administrative and residential accommodation, and banking infrastructures. At the
centre, the town of Žatec. At the same time, confidence same time, remarkable residential houses and villas of
in quality was behind many innovations associated with warehouse owners were built here, as well as other, large
hop drying, from older methods of drying harvested hop buildings with social, cultural, and spiritual functions
cones in the roof spaces of buildings in the town and such as the theatre, synagogue and cinemas.
villages, to the development of unprecedented rural
hop drying kilns. They made it possible to speed up the At the same time, the image of the rural landscape
drying process and thus increase production by leaps and gradually changed after a completely revolutionary
bounds. The quality of hops and the pursuit of efficient change in the appearance of the hop fields where the
cultivation have also been behind several inventions in hops are grown. The beginning of the cultivation of hops
introducing mechanisation, finding new ways to control was associated with supports for the hop bines, which
hop diseases and pests, and generally improving the consisted of wooden poles, similar to the poles used in
methods of various seasonal work, including enhancing hop trellises today. They had been heavily sunk into the
the relevant working tools. ground every spring since the Middle Ages, removed
from the land together with the harvested bines and
The mass construction of drying kilns for the artificial carefully stored until the next season. Since the inventive
drying of hops in rural and urban environments, buildings improvement of all the methods of growing, processing,
for certification, conservation in sulphur chambers with and breeding hops, headed by growers from Žatec, the
high chimneys, which enriched the town skyline, and image of the landscape of Saaz hops has fundamentally