Olomouc or Olmutz ( Olmütz in German) is a regional capital of 102.000 inhabitants in the center of the Moravie, in Czech Republic. Located on banks of the Morava, Olomouc is, with Brno, the historical center, policy, monk and academic of Moravie. It shelters the Palacký University and the archbishop's palace of Moravie.

History

Recent archaeological excavations revealed the existence of a Roman camp in the enclosure of the town of Olomouc confirming the presence of the Roman legions going up since the Pannonia. The legend going back to the Rebirth and according to which Jules César would have founded the city remains, to date, unprovable, not more than the etymology of the name of the city Iuliomontium (Jules Mount) which would have become Olomutium then Olomutz.

During the Middle Ages, Olomouc and Brno compete for preeminence as a capital of Moravie. Olomouc, which remains the Moravian religious metropolis to date, definitively loses political supremacy in 1640: the emperor Ferdinand III prefers Brno then to him, southernmost and thus nearer to Vienna and this, whereas the Guerre Thirty Year old bursts and that the Czech nobility, in its great majority, embraces the Protestant religion. The occupation of Olomouc, of 1642 with 1650, by the Swedish Protestant troops definitively weakens the town of an economic point of view. The following decades see the difference between the two cities being accentuated. Reconquered by the imperial armies, Olomouc is seen equipped with fortifications by Marie-Therese, queen of Bohemia and Hungary.

The Backing of Olmütz

The imperial court takes refuge in Olomouc in 1848, at the time of the popular risings with Vienna and Prague. Olomouc is especially known historians under his German name of Olmütz, at the time of what is called the " backing of Olmütz". Frederic-Guillaume IV of Prussia, in spite of the German nationalist movements which push it to take the head of a reunified Germany, gives up it vis-a-vis the opposition of François-Joseph Ier of Austria. Its chancellor, the baron von Manteuffel meets, the November 29th 1850, in Olomouc, his counterpart Austrian Schwarzenberg and to inform him of his renunciation. The German nationalists include/understand that it is necessary to break by the force the Austrian opposition, which Bismarck, named in 1862 chancellor of Prussia, will do in 1866 with the Bataille of Sadowa.

Mirror of the decline of the city, the university founded in 1573 by the Society of Jesus, is dissolved in 1860 per François-Joseph Ist It will be restored in 1946 and takes the name of Université Palacký, in homage to František Palacký, historian and Czech politician who played a key function in the cultural and nationalist rebirth Czech at the 19th century.

Culture

The town of Olomouc can be enorgueillir of a big number of monuments, palate and churches. One will quote inter alia, the town hall started at the 15th century and flanked of a Gothic vault and a Beffroi which shelters a astronomical Horloge decorated with mosaic in style realistic-Socialist, work of Karel Svolinský, the palate of the dukes of Moravie was thereafter integrated in the complex archiépiscopal and is next to the cathedral.

The column of the Holy Trinity set up in 1740 at the end of an epidemic of Plague, work of the sculptor Baroque Moravian Ondrej Zahner, is registered with the World heritage by UNESCO.

Churches

The cathedral (Dom) is dedicated to Saint Venceslas and lives, in its same walls, the assassination the August 4th 1306 of Venceslas III of Bohemia, death which marks the end of the dynasty of the Přemyslides and the beginning of German hegemony on the Bohemian one and Moravie.

Other churches and temples, Gothics and baroques decorate the city. The monastery Benedictine of Hradisko is an good example of architecture moniale baroque; it is useful today like hospital.

Fountains

A rich person together of fountains was built at the time baroque to decorate the places of the city and recently restored and supplemented:
  • 1683 Fountain of Neptune (low place) - by the Polish sculptor Michael Mandík and the stone mason olomoucian Václav Schüler
  • 1687 Fountain of Hercules (high place) - id.
  • 1707 Fountain of Jupiter (low place) - by the sculptor Václav Render
  • 1709 Fountain of the Tritons (place of the republic) - id.
  • 1725 Fountain of Caesar (high place) - id.
  • 1727 Fountain of Mercury - by Václav Render and Filip Sattler
  • Fountain of half of the 18th century by Filip Sattler restored in 2005 and reinstalled in front of the Dominican cloister
  • 2003 Fountain of Orion (high place) by the sculptor Ivan Theimer

Personalities

See too

  • Sigma Olomouc, football club of the city
  • HC Olomouc, club of Hockey of the city, first champion of the Extraliga in 1993-94
  • University Palacký

External bonds

  • Olomouc - Czech.cz, the official Web site of the Czech Republic
  • UNESCO: list world cultural heritage - the column of the co. Trinity

Simple: Olomouc

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