Vladař, Mountain summit in Tepelská vrchovina, Czech Republic
Vladař is a 693-metre basalt table mountain in the Tepelská vrchovina, its flat summit ringed by large stone walls and bearing a silted-up pond. Beech-oak forest covers the slopes, which drop over 200 metres to the Střela valley; the summit plateau is formed of olivine nephelinite with olivine crystals up to 5 mm.
The flat summit holds a Celtic hillfort from the Iron Age, and in November 1421 Jan Žižka withstood a three-day siege there by Catholic troops from Pilsen, breaking out and retreating to Žatec. A small monument marks the event. In 2007, wooden structures dated 777–390 BC were found in a drained pond at the foot of the mountain.
The name Vladař is first recorded in 1421 as Wladarz; the Polish word wlodarz meant a village councillor or steward, hinting at the hill's medieval role. A small monument on the summit marks the Hussite battle, and the educational trail Cesta za pověstí circles the mountain from Žlutice.
A red-marked hiking trail leads about two kilometres from the Záhořice railway station on the Rakovník–Bečov nad Teplou line up to the summit. A second route, the Cesta za pověstí nature trail, circles the mountain from Žlutice past the villages of Kobylé, Kolešov and Záhořice.
The summit plateau is enclosed by large stone ramparts, and the small peat pool there has no inflow; during prehistoric settlement it served as a water cistern. The pool is a remnant of the hilltop's early use.
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