The name sounds like a horror film, and the reality was grim enough. In the 1950s, the communist government of Czechoslovakia sent tens of thousands of political prisoners to labour camps in the Jáchymov region to mine uranium for the Soviet nuclear programme. In a red brick building near Ostrov, known as the Red Tower of Death, prisoners crushed and sorted uranium ore by hand, without protection, exposed to dust and radiation. Many died or suffered lasting illness. The building is now a memorial, part of the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Region World Heritage listing, and a powerful reminder of the human cost of the Cold War.
Jáchymov's history goes back much further. In the sixteenth century, silver mines here made the town one of the richest in Europe, and the silver coins minted here, Joachimsthalers, gave their name, through the shortened thaler, to the dollar. Later, the uranium ore pitchblende from Jáchymov supplied Marie Curie with the material from which she isolated radium, and the town became the world's first radon spa, still used for treatments today. Klínovec, the highest peak of the Ore Mountains on the Czech side, rises above the town.
The roads around Jáchymov climb steeply from the Ohře valley into the Ore Mountains, with sharp bends, forest and views, and the road over the border to Oberwiesenthal in Germany, past Klínovec and Fichtelberg, is a fine ride. Surfaces are mixed, and on the ridge it can be sunny in Ostrov and foggy and drizzling at the border. The area is quiet and uncrowded, with little traffic outside the spa town and the ski resorts.
Ostrov, a couple of kilometres down the hill, has petrol stations and supermarkets, and Karlovy Vary, the grand spa town with its colonnades and hot springs, is a short ride south. Jáchymov has a few restaurants and cafés and a faded spa elegance all its own, and the Royal Mint building in the town square now holds a museum on silver mining and the thaler. The memorial at the tower is sobering and deserves quiet attention; the nearby trail of the prison camps, signposted through the forest, adds the stories of individual prisoners.