Cheb

Cheb, known in German as Eger, stands on a bend of the Ohře at the western edge of Bohemia. A fortified marketplace was recorded here in 1149, and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa acquired it in 1167. The castle rose above a town that became the centre of Egerland, a frontier region contested by rulers of Bohemia and the Empire.

In 1322 King John of Bohemia acquired Cheb from Emperor Ludwig IV, bringing it permanently under the Bohemian Crown despite local resistance. By the fifteenth century it was among the kingdom's largest and wealthiest towns, though it suffered in the Hussite Wars. Swedish armies invaded during the Thirty Years' War, and in 1634 the imperial commander Albrecht von Wallenstein was murdered here. A great fire destroyed much of the northern old town in 1809.