10th–15th centuries The first verified written mention is in the charter of the chapter at the Church of St. Stephen in
Litoměřice, dated to 1056 or 1057. In 1249, it was first mentioned with the title of royal town. The charter of the Prague Benedictine monastery from 993 was considered to be the first written mention of Ústí nad Labem, but its legitimacy has been called into question. In the second half of the 13th century, King
Ottokar II invited
German settlers into the country and granted them a German form of municipal incorporation, thereby founding the city proper. In 1423, as King of Bohemia,
Sigismund pledged the town to Elector
Frederick I of Meissen, who occupied it with a
Saxon garrison. On 16 June 1426, after the city was besieged by the 25,000
Hussites, the besiegers defeat a German army of 70,000 troops was sent to its relief but the Hussites defeated the Germans amid great slaughter. The next day, the Hussites stormed and razed the town. It was left derelict for three years before rebuilding began in 1429. In the 1870s, with only 11,000 people, it was a major producer of woolen goods,
linen, paper, ships, and chemicals and carried on a large trade in grain, fruit,
mineral water, lumber, and coal.
20th century The factories of Aussig—as it was then known—were an early centre of the
Nazi movement. The German Workers' Party in Austria () was founded on 15 November 1903 and later gave rise to the
Sudeten German Party and
Austrian National Socialism. Their books continued to be printed in Ústí nad Labem even after the formation of
Czechoslovakia in 1918. During the 1930 census, Ústí nad Labem was home to 43,793 residents: 32,878 considered German, 8,735 Czech or Slovak, 222 Jews, 16 Russians, and 11 Hungarians. Ústí nad Labem was ceded to
Nazi Germany in October 1938 under the terms of the
Munich Agreement and administered as part of the
Reichsgau Sudetenland. In April 1945, the city was severely bombed by the
United States Air Force. The bombing killed about 600 people and destroyed the historic centre of the city. Along with
Plzeň, Ústí nad Labem became the most damaged Czech city during World War II. After World War II, the city was restored to
Czechoslovakia and the
German-speaking population was expelled.
Ústí massacre Shortly after the war ended, on 31 July 1945, an explosion of the local ammunition depot triggered a
pogrom of the German population, known as the
Ústí massacre, mostly at the hands of out-of-town paramilitary groups. Whilst the official government investigation attributed the explosion to
Nazi Werwolves (German saboteurs), contemporary historians have questioned the attribution as several other equally probable possibilities have been proposed. The pogrom was used as part of the justification of the
Potsdam Conference to deport German citizens from Czechoslovakia, as continued cohabitation was argued to be impossible. It is estimated that between 80 and a 100 people died in the explosion and subsequent murders, nearly double the 43 confirmed victims.
After World War II In May 1948, the
Communist government passed a new constitution
declaring a people's republic. Beginning in the 1960s dissidence and general unhappiness with communist rule gave way to new artistic pursuits tackling the country's issues, Ústí nad Labem was primarily representative of this with Kladivadlo, a theatre which moved to Ústí nad Labem after it ran into issues with support from organizers, and Dialog a monthly political magazine. The city gained notoriety in 1999, when the
Matiční Street Wall was built to separate Matiční Street with mainly
Romani population from other residents, which turned into an international scandal. The wall was torn down after six weeks of its existence. ==Demographics==