Most of the town's buildings come from its Golden Era in the second half of the 19th century, when many celebrities and top European rulers came to enjoy the curative carbon dioxide springs.

The town centre with the spa cultural landscape is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument reservation.

It was only through the efforts of Josef Nehr, the abbey's physician, who from 1779 until his death in 1820 worked hard to demonstrate the curative properties of the springs, that the waters began to be used for medicinal purposes.

[6] The water from the Cross Spring (Kreuzquelle, Křížový pramen) was evaporated and the final product was sold as a laxative under the name of sal teplensis.

The modern spa town was founded by the Teplá abbots, namely Karl Kaspar Reitenberger, who also bought some of the surrounding forests to protect them.

The inhospitable marshland valley was changed into a park-like countryside with colonnades, neoclassical buildings and pavilions around the springs.

It was also a popular resort and vacation venue for European rabbis and their Hasidic followers, accommodating their needs with kosher restaurants, religious prayer services, etc.

The town's public transport is operated mainly by trolleybuses and accompanied by buses servicing the neighbouring villages.

The venue, Mariánské Lázně Longtrack Speedway, hosted six Long Track World Champion finals from 1976 to 1994 and five rounds of Grand-Prix racing (the most recent in 2011).

[14] The water in the springs has an average temperature of 7–10 °C, and is formed through interactions with the deep fault lines that run under the region.

These include the Anglican Church designed by the notable Victorian architect William Burges and founded by Lady Anna Scott in memory of her husband who died in Mariánské Lázně in 1867.

Among the films and TV series that were shot in Mariánské Lázně are Music from Mars (1955), Thirty Cases of Major Zeman (1978), Dobrodružství kriminalistiky (1989), Dáma a Král (2017) and Army of Thieves (2021).