Architectural and technical values
The characteristics of hops have also fundamentally affected the construction and external appearance of the buildings in which they were and are being processed because they are light, but their storage requires a large area. It has also always been essential to provide adequate ventilation for drying and a good possibility of shading the area where the hops were stored so that they do not lose colour.
Nominated area contains many unique structures representing the built hop-related heritage: warehouses, sulphur chimneys, hop drying kilns, and includes many other important buildings with excellent architecture. There are buildings of burgher houses, structures associated with the processing of hops, and buildings reflecting the socioeconomic effect of business with hops, which are villas of hop entrepreneurs and buildings of related infrastructure such as banks, post offices, railway stations, schools, theatres and cinemas.
Historical four-chamber hop drying kiln in the village of Trnovany, No. 9, in the foreground the Blšanka stream.
The Statue of St. Lawrence, the patron saint of hop growers, at the gate of the entrance to farmstead No. 10 in Stekník.
The Prague Suburb - a former hop warehouse with chambers for sulphuring the hops and a residential villa of the A. Meindl and G. Epstein company - the characteristic example of the combination of a residential building and a hop processing building of one entrepreneurial family, No. 753 and 1257 Kovářská St.
Characteristic "Oeil-de boeufs" (dormers windows) on the roof ventilated the water vapour produced by drying out the hops on the drying trays in the loft (roof space). House No. 7 in Obránců Míru Street in Žatec as an example of dozens of such features
The floor of a typical chamber hop drying kiln in the Saaz hop growing region. Dried hops rest in piles, which will then be pressed into cubes on the lower floor and sent for processing to warehouses and packaging rooms in Žatec.
Historic hop drying kiln in the village of Trnovany from 1908.