Ten Towns Known for What They Make

Jingdezhen has made Chinese ceramics for at least 1,000 years, and it took its present name in 1004 CE from an era name of the Song emperor Zhenzong, during whose reign its porcelain rose to fame. It is known as the Porcelain Capital, and its porcelain industry sites were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2026.

Meissen sits on the Elbe in Saxony about 25 kilometers northwest of Dresden. It is renowned as the home of Meissen porcelain, the first high quality porcelain produced outside East Asia, first manufactured there in 1710, and the Albrechtsburg castle was built between 1472 and 1525.

Faenza was founded by the Romans as Faventia, and its name gave the term faience to the tin-glazed pottery it made famous. It is called the City of Ceramics, holds the International Museum of Ceramics, and earned UNESCO Creative City designation for Crafts and Folk Arts in October 2025.

Jablonec nad Nisou became known from the eighteenth century for glass and costume jewelry, especially bijou. That heritage is preserved in the Museum of Glass and Costume Jewellery, established in 1904, and the town only gained town status in 1866.

Steyr is in Upper Austria, and in 1830 the blacksmith Leopold Werndl founded an armory there that grew into the Steyr-Daimler-Puch conglomerate and its successor Steyr Motors, both still headquartered in the city. Its Gothic Bummerlhaus is regarded as one of the finest small-scale examples of the style in Central Europe.

Mladá Boleslav grew from 26,021 people in 1961 to 41,226 in 1980 amid industrial expansion driven by Laurin & Klement, founded in 1895 and renamed Škoda Auto after its acquisition in 1925. The city hosts the Škoda Museum, and its Old City Hall dates from 1554 to 1559.

Zlín was shaped by the Bata Shoes Company, founded in 1894 by Tomáš Baťa, whose social and urban development scheme built it into a functionalist industrial city unique in Europe between 1923 and 1938. Much of the city is protected today as an urban monument zone, and it was named Gottwaldov from 1949 to 1989.

Gliwice hosted the first coke-fired blast furnace on the European continent, built in 1796, which helped make it a major nineteenth century industrial center in Upper Silesia. Its Radio Tower was the site of the Gleiwitz incident of 31 August 1939, and the Silesian University of Technology has more than 20,000 students.

Esch-sur-Alzette was a modest farming village until iron ore was found in the 1850s, and the steel company ARBED was founded there in 1911. The last blast furnace shut in 1997, and the former Belval steelworks now holds the Rockhal concert hall and University of Luxembourg facilities, helping make the city a European Capital of Culture for 2022.

Gütersloh in North Rhine-Westphalia is best known as home to the media company Bertelsmann, which employs 11,300 workers in the district, alongside the appliance manufacturer Miele. The modern city was formed in 1969 when eight municipalities merged.