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• Although Ostrava is often described as a ‘black city’ (due to its traditional heavy industries, coal and steel), it is actually one of the greenest cities in the Czech Republic, with 30 m2 of parks and gardens per inhabitant.
• The last coal mine in Ostrava was closed in 1994. However, the city’s mining industry is still ‘commemorated’ by 313 ventilation pipes which release mine gases from the underground workings at the surface. These ‘exhaust pipes’ can be found in various parts of Ostrava – there is even one in front of the Antonín Dvořák Theatre in the city centre. The highest concentration of mine gases has been found in the Mariánské Hory area (at the Šverma 1 and Šverma 2 shafts), in Koblov (shaft K 5), Přívoz (Shafts Od 2 and Od 4), Silesian Ostrava (the Zwierzina area) and Hrušov (in the vicinity of the former Hrušov colliery).
• The border between the two historical provinces of Moravia and Silesia runs right through the middle of Ostrava, along the Odra and Ostravice rivers.
• Ostrava has its very own version of a volcano – the Ema slag-heap (officially known as the Terezie Ema slag-heap). This local landmark was formed of mine waste from the nearby Terezie mine (later renamed the Petr Bezruč mine after the Silesian bard and champion of the local coal miners). The chemical composition of the waste produces various hot gases (mainly sulphur dioxide). Inside the slag heap, the high temperatures create rare minerals (porcelainites and jasper). With a height of 315 m, Ema is the second highest point in Ostrava (the highest is the hill at Krásné Pole) in the far west of the metropolitan area.
• Ostrava has its very own ‘Hradčany’ (the name of the area around Prague castle) – this is the nickname used by local people for the blast furnaces of the Vítkovice ironworks.
  • Although Ostrava is not well-known among tourists seeking out historical buildings, architects appreciate the city as a textbook example of urban planning. Many leading Czech and international architects have left their mark here – including Camillo Sitte, Erich Mendelsohn, Wunibald Deininger, Josef Gočár, Kamil Hilbert, Marie Fromer and Ernst Korner.
Buildings by Wunibald Deininger
W. Deininger – Hotel Palace
W. Deininger – Café de l’Europe
W. Deininger – Živnostenská banka
C. Sitte – Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary
Buildings by Felix Neumann:
F. Neumann – Hotel Garni (Royal), now the cafeteria of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ostrava
F.Neumann - Café Union, dnes sídlo GE Capital Bank
Josef Gočár – Anglo-československá banka, now PVT

• Ostrava’s New City Hall is the largest city hall building in the Czech Republic, and has the highest observation tower of any city hall – 85.6 metres.

• The oldest bell in the Czech Republic is from the church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary in Ostrava’s Zábřeh district. It is currently displayed in the Archbishopric Museum in Olomouc. The bell was cast at the turn of the 14th century and bears a unique embossed decoration with a seal and a Gothic coat-of-arms bearing the double-tailed Czech lion. The chemical composition of the bell is also unusual: it contains a large proportion of silver.
• In the Middle Ages Ostrava was situated on the ‘Amber Route’ – a long-established trading route running from the Baltic coast (where the amber was found) to southern Europe (northern Italy, Greece) and Egypt.
• Ostrava, like other cities, was created when several villages were joined together. However, the boundaries between Ostrava’s various districts are still quite distinct, and each district has its own unique character and architectural style. During a single tram ride you can pass from a world of factories, coal mines and blast furnaces to a rural idyll with fields, woods and picturesque cottages. After admiring imposing city-centre buildings designed by some of the great names of 1920s and 1930s architecture, it is only a short journey to the world of ‘Sorela’ – buildings in the pompous style of 1950s ‘socialist realism’, which provoke a mixture of ridicule and admiration.
• Ostrava used to be a city of great contrasts, with luxury and poverty existing side by side. The prosperous industrialists had their grand mansions built right next to their factories and ironworks, just a stone’s throw from their workers’ cottages.
  • Begging has never been a feature of life in Ostrava – historically there was never a large prosperous middle class in the city, and so Ostrava’s poorest citizens relied on their own initiative and collected waste for re-use. Even today, a typical feature of the cityscape are the ‘wagoners’, collecting various waste items on their hand-pushed carts to sell at the recycling centres.

For more interesting facts and figures about Ostrava, see the website of the Statutory City of Ostrava or the portal Ostrava which also has an Esperanto version: Protalo: Ostrava. FFor more information about Ostrava in Esperanto, see Kategorio: Ostrava.