Mill Colonnade (Mlýnská kolonáda)

The Mill Colonnade (Mlýnská kolonáda) in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, is the city's most magnificent spa colonnade — a monumental 132-metre neo-Renaissance stone arcade designed by Josef Zítek and completed in 1881, housing five of Karlovy Vary's celebrated thermal springs and forming the architectural centrepiece of the spa promenade along the Teplá River. The colonnade's 124 Corinthian columns, life-size statues representing the months of the year, and sweeping arcaded galleries embody the grandeur of nineteenth-century Central European spa culture at its most ambitious. Karlovy Vary's thermal springs, used by Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV from the fourteenth century, are dispensed from the colonnade's spring taps to visitors who promenade with traditional porcelain spa cups — a ritual unchanged for centuries.