For years, the charter of the Prague Benedictine monastery from 993 was considered to be the first written mention of Ústí nad Labem, but it has been proven to be a hoax.

[5] In 1423, as King of Bohemia, Sigismund pledged the town to Elector Frederick I of Meissen, who occupied it with a Saxon garrison.

[5] Ústí nad Labem was again burned down in 1583 and was sacked by the Swedes in 1639 amid the Thirty Years' War.

[12] 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.

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.

The Jewish community in Ústí nad Labem was mostly exterminated over the course of World War II amid the Holocaust.

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.

Between 80 and a thousand people died in the event, with estimates varying widely, but being generally much higher than the official body count.

Under the terms of the Potsdam Conference and the Beneš decrees, the city was restored to Czechoslovakia and almost the totality of its previous population expelled as being German.

The city gained notoriety in the late 1990s when a 150-metre-long (490 ft) wall was constructed along part of the Matiční Street separating houses on one side from the tenement blocks on the other.

Mayor Ladislav Hruška promised local homeowners' representatives that the wall would be finished by the end of September, 1998.

Foreign journalists travelled to Ústí nad Labem to investigate, and were told by councillors that the wall was not meant to segregate by race, but to keep respectable citizens safe from noise and rubbish coming from the opposite side of the street.

Despite these changes, the Roma Civic Initiative and Deputy Prime Minister Vladimír Špidla vocally opposed the construction.

[15] The new plans slated construction to begin 30 August 1999, but a decision by the district office delayed the move because a wall that large would require a permit, and threatened to damage the root systems of trees along Matični Street.

Domestic and international pressure eventually persuaded the city to dismantle the wall, and it was demolished six weeks after it had been erected.

[19] The D8 motorway (part of the European route E55) from Prague to Dresden intersects the western border of Ústí nad Labem.

The largest of these is Ústí nad Labem main railway station which is served by international EuroCity trains.

Freight transportation and pleasure cruises are run on the water line section Pardubice – Chvaletice – Ústí nad Labem – Hřensko – Hamburg.

The city hosts the Ústí nad Labem Half Marathon, one of the World Athletics Label Road Races.

[25] The Střekov Castle is one of the main sights of Ústí nad Labem, and one of the most visited tourist destinations in the whole region.