Loket

Loket stands in a tight bend of the Ohře in western Bohemia. Its Czech and German names both mean 'elbow', after the river that surrounds the old town on three sides. A royal castle was built on the promontory in the late twelfth century, and a small town grew beneath it. Most of the walls were raised in the fourteenth century and strengthened with Baroque bastions in the seventeenth. In 1815 a porcelain factory was founded here.