The Czech lands have accumulated so much natural wealth on their westernmost edge that this region has become a permanent destination for prospectors, Christian pilgrims, spa visitors and nature lovers. It was not only the dramatic landscape of the basins, whose horizons are closed by the mountains Krušné and Doupovské, the forests of Slavkovský and Český, which attracted many residents of neighboring and more distant countries. The greatest treasures were hidden underground, so here in every era people searched for something and always found something rare - in the Middle Ages silver and non-ferrous metals, later ceramic and porcelain clays, then coal, but above all their lost health. 150 years ago, the spa triangle of Mariánské Lázně, Karlovy Vary, Františkovy Lázně was the fashionable center of Europe, which could only partially compete with the Swiss St. Moritz. Powerful and influential people from all over Europe, but also from overseas, found their "island of oblivion" here for a few weeks. Emperors and tsars, kings, sheikhs, the high aristocracy of all of Europe, as well as artists and wealthy townspeople, traveled here. For everyone else who could not afford a spa stay, healing mineral water was distributed and the poorest could take it from the springs at any time. And everyone who visited this region once had to keep coming back here, as if they were attracted by a magnetic force hidden somewhere in the interior of the mysterious Slavkovský forest. For example, the English king Edward VII. returned to the West Bohemian Spa perhaps ten times, and Goethe went to Karlovy Vary throughout his life and spent a total of about three and a half years of his life there. And the two were far from the only ones.