Go East: A Day in Olomouc

Prague is the city of the Czech Republic, over twice as large as its nearest rival, Brno (pronounced BURR-no). Brno is closely followed by Ostrava, a former mining/industrial city that is making something of a comeback. Then there's Pilsen, birthplace of Pilsner, and then, rounding out the top five, and less then 10% the size of Prague with about 100,000 residents, is Olomouc (kinda pronounced UL-uh-mootz--kinda).

Now, all of these cities have their charms, and I will get to them all in time, but I'd heard a lot about how beautiful Olomouc was--and how relatively unvisited by tourists--so I decided to organize a visit.

In the center is the Horní náměstí, while on the right
edge you can see the Dolní náměstí--the upper and lower squares.

Last Saturday morning, my friends and I arrived bright and early at Prague's main railway station to board the train east, arriving at Olomouc about two and a quarter hours after departure. We weren't at all certain of good weather--the forecast literally used the phrase "dreary"--but we decided to soldier on. Despite a minor delay and a minor inconvenience (the AC was broken on our train car, though the conductor did give us free water, which was nice), we arrived in Olomouc. And, while overcast, the weather was pretty dry all day.

The legendary founder of Olomouc is none other that Julius Caesar, who is said to have placed a camp at this site along the Morava River called Iuliomontium (Mount Julius), from which the city's current name derives. While this is disputed, there is archaeological evidence of a Roman encampment nearby dating to the late 2nd century--a few centuries after Julius, but it lends at least some credence to the origin myth. Seizing on this connection to Roman glory, the town added a number of Roman-themed fountains in the town squares in the 1700s, saving the largest for Julius Caesar.

Very imposing...

...though Caesar's face is a bit goofy.

A truer history of the town seems to involve the Slavs arriving around 600 and settlements cropping up all over the area. Eventually, a bishopric was settled on Olomouc, and the area grew in importance until it became one of the seats of the early Moravian dynasties. Hundreds of years later, after the Thirty Years' War--and eight years of Swedish occupation--Olomouc permanently fell behind Brno as the leading city in Moravia, even though it still retained some prominence.

Much of that prominence was due to Palacký University, the oldest university in Moravia and the second oldest in Czechia, founded in 1573 by the Jesuits to counter-act the Protestant domination of the area. It's been open pretty consistently ever since. Today, Olomouc is still largely a "college town," with a higher density of students than any other town in Central Europe. The University's most famous alumnus is likely Gregor Mendel, monk, father of genetics, and discoverer of the laws of heredity.

Here immortalized by a plaque.

The university comprises a large portion of the old city, and one of its buildings even incorporates the last remaining medieval city gate, dating back to the 13th century.

Called the "Jewish Gate" because the city's Jewish population was forced to use it to enter the city to sell their goods. Not coincidentally, it was the least convenient city gate.

All this is very well, but Olomouc is mainly known for four things: its fountains, its column, its clock, and its churches.

As I mentioned above, during the Baroque period in the early 1700s, the city decided to add a collection of Roman-themed fountains in the city center. Unlike many public fountains from the period, however, these weren't removed with the advent of plumbing and so remain, echoing the era's fondness for all things Roman and Italian (see Troja Chateau). Aside from Caesar, the fountains feature figures from Roman mythology. In the Lower Square, there's Jupiter and his lightning bolt...

Again, his face is pretty jacked up...

And Neptune with his trident.

Not my picture--I couldn't take a picture this good to save my life.

In Republic Square, just off the Upper Square, there's a fountain of Triton, another ocean god.

And no, I don't know why a totally land-locked city has fountains of *two* sea gods...

There are also, scattered about, Baroque fountains honoring Mercury and Hercules. In the Upper Square, however, is a non-Baroque, modern fountain based on the myth of Arion, a young man whose singing was so beautiful that a dolphin rescued him when he was lost at sea. You can tell the fountain is modern because it is weird as hell.

The Arion fountain, which features a lot of turtles, generally weird imagery, and over, in the corner, what appears to be Arion and a dolphin in a passionate embrace.

Notice that, instead of shoes, the children have small turtles strapped to their feet.

Arion and his dolphin pal. Yes, Arion is naked. It's...awkward.

Hiding behind Dolphin Boy, however, is one of the truly great sites of Olomouc, the Holy Trinity Column, a landmark included on the UNESCO World Heritage List. It's also the "biggest Baroque sculptural group in the Czech Republic," according to Wikipedia, and UNESCO cited it as "one of the most exceptional examples of the apogee of central European Baroque artistic expression," which...okay.

Okay, I guess the day was pretty dreary at times.

There, that's better.

Built in the early to mid 1700s, the column is a testament to the Catholic faith of people of Olomouc, especially in gratitude for the subsidence of a plague that swept through Moravia from 1713 to 1715. Moreover, the column is a marker of civic pride, with all the designers and artisans being residents of the city, and all the saints depicted on it having some connection to Olomouc. It features statues, carvings, reliefs, and there's even a small chapel at the base. The construction of the column is, somewhat sadly, tinged with tragedy, with several designers dying early deaths, and some workmen dying from mercury exposure due to the chemicals use during the gilding process.

Shortly after it was completed, Olomouc was besieged by the Prussian army, and several bullets hit the column. According to history, the residents of the city went to the opposing general, and implored him *not* to shoot their new monument. The general complied, and after peace returned, the city added a gilded cannon shot to the column to memorialize the event.

I didn't spot this from the ground, but it's cool to know it's there.

Just across the square from the column is the Olomouc Astronomical Clock, one of only two in the Czech Republic, alongside the famous Prague Clock. The first mention of the clock dates from 1519, though there are indications is dates from the previous century, making it just slightly more recent than the more famous timepiece in Prague. However, it has had many, many facelifts over the years, going through Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque styles before arriving at its current appearance in the 1950s.

Random old dude who wouldn't clear shot not included.

There--better without the old dude.

As you may have noticed from the pictures, the Olomouc Clock has a rather distinctive style that seems more 1950 than 1450. This came about for two reasons. Firstly, at the very end of World War II, literally in the final days of the war, the Nazi troops who had been occupying Olomouc opened fire on the clock as they made their retreat. In an act of pure and total malice, the clock was essentially destroyed by troops who knew that their fight was lost. Thus, at the end of the war, the city was freed (though, since it was liberated by the Soviet army, how free they were was a question still to be decided), but one of its greatest symbols was in ruins.

The clock in approximately 1926, before the Nazis destroyed it.

The clock stayed this way for a few years of post-war reconstruction until, in the 1950s, after the installation of a Communist government in Czechoslovakia, some local artisans decided that the Olomouc Clock, long a symbol of the city, needed to be restored. Well, perhaps not restored. Throughout its centuries-long existence, the Olomouc clock, like the Prague clock, had celebrated the the twin powers of the Middle Ages: the King and the Church. The new clock, in keeping with the new veneration of the proletariat and the average worker, was totally redone in a "Socialist Realist" style, with workers replacing saints and the common man replacing kings. There are tile mosaics of local (non-religious) traditions, and at the bottom, the largest figures are of the worker and the scientist, working together for the common good. Other figures include athletes, mothers, and laborers of all kinds. The only part of the old clock that was used for the new was some of the internal mechanisms from the 1890s. And thus, as a symbol of socialist ideology, the Olomouc Clock was reborn.

Every quarter hour, the blacksmiths strike their anvil to the chimes, and at noon, the figures do a little dance to local folk music--a melding of local history and Marxist-Leninist imagery.

Unlike most of the socialist art/propaganda that decorated the town halls and public squares of  Czechoslovakia in 1989, the Olomouc Clock was left in place after the Velvet Revolution and today offers a fascinating glimpse at the image of itself the city--and the country--wanted to project to its citizens.

The churches of Olomouc, on the other hand, were left relatively untouched by both the Nazis and the Communists, and display a range of styles from Gothic to Neo-Gothic, and everything in between. Five are included on the official "See the City Center in Half a Day" brochure given out at the information center, so we focused on those, though there are other religious buildings all around the area.

The grandest, and most imposing, of these five is St. Wenceslas Cathedral.

Taken by my friend, who is much better at this than I am.

Perched on a small hill on the edge of the historic center, and on the site of the original castle that first gave the two its prestige, the current iteration of St. Wenceslas Cathedral is amalgam of a Romanesque basilica from the 11th-12th centuries, a massive Gothic overhaul in the 13th and 14th, and then a significant Neo-Gothic reconstruction in the 19th century. The southern tower, at 100 meters (330 feet), is the tallest church tower in Moravia and the second tallest in the Czech Republic.

So tall I couldn't fit it all in the picture.

The interior is splendid and is reminiscent of the slightly more "Eastern" style of decor found in Krakow.

There is also a two-storied crypt below the church. The Archdiocese of Olomouc, of which the Cathedral is the seat, uses the first level down to display rotating collections of artifacts and artwork connected to the area. The bottom level is the final resting place of several medieval and Renaissance bishops of Olomouc.

Most of the other churches featured by the tourism folks are essentially along the road from the Column and the Clock to the Cathedral (which is, conveniently, very near the train station). There's St. Maurice's Church, dating back six centuries and blending Gothic and Neo-Gothic, with an unusual configuration of towers (one of which you can climb for a view of the city) and one of the largest pipe organs in Central Europe...

There's the Church of Our lady of the Snows, a magnificent, if fading, Baroque edifice that is near the Jesuit college and has served generations of students...

My favorite, however, was St. Michael's Church, from the late 17th-early 18th century, whose "dull exterior"--quoting the tourist brochure verbatim here--masks what resides within.

So dull, there aren't even good photographs by *other* people.

This is the bell tower, which I took a photo of *after* we left for church,
for reasons which will become apparent. Note the large window at the top.

The interior is positively overwhelming in its Baroque grandeur, even though it was renovated in 1897. Fortunately, unlike many 19th century renovations, they maintained as much as possible of the existing style and ornamentation of the church, creating images like this...

Unfortunately, the church was undergoing significant restoration when we visited, so it was impossible to capture it all, but this Google search should help you. However, what the brochure forgot to mention is that St. Michael's allows you to explore both the upper and lower levels of the church. So, if you want to climb a lot of stairs, you can reach a floor with a small museum of the history of the church in the bell tower, and then, after some more stairs, you reach the bells themselves, and a nice view of the city...

That's St. Maurice's on the right and the Town Hall tower on the left, as seen from the top window.

Plus, you can go into the church's crypt, where there is a small pond and a space for instruction and reflection.

All of these areas are entirely open to the public--there are even signs telling you which switches to turn off as you leave the tower and asking you to watch your head as you enter the crypt--but, especially on a dreary day without a lot of tourists, it certainly felt as if we were seeing secret places not meant for the public.

And that's rather how much of Olomouc felt. At just over two hours from Prague via frequent trains, Olomouc is a hidden gem that is both highly worthy of discovery and a place I hope continues to be overlooked by all but the most inquisitive of tourists, just so I can save it all for myself.