History of Ostrava (overview)
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Overview The site of the present-day city of Ostrava was inhabited by nomadic peoples before the establishment of a permanent settlement. Around the middle of the 13th century, the small village of Ostrava was promoted to town status by Bruno, the Archbishop of Olomouc, and gained the rights of a town. The town was originally named simply Ostrava, but was later renamed ‘German Ostrava’. The name ‘Moravian Ostrava’ (in Czech ‘Moravská Ostrava’) does not appear in documents until the 15th century. The central square of the town was large for its time, and was lined with 42 burghers’ houses. By the end of the 14th century fortifying walls had been built, and Ostrava also had a parish church. By the mid-16th century, under Bishop Thurzo, the town had become one of the most important possessions of the Olomouc Archbishopric, and lay on the border with the Principality of Těšín (Cieszyn in Polish / Teschen in German) and the Polish state. The town continued to develop, and was granted the right to hold several markets every year. The architectural face of the town was also transformed by the work of Italian master builders, and many burghers’ houses were constructed in the Renaissance style. As the period of prosperity continued, Moravian Ostrava purchased the nearby villages of Čertova Lhotka (now Mariánské Hory) and Přívoz. However, in 1556 a devastating fire destroyed Ostrava almost completely. In 1625 the town was hit by the plague, which killed between five and six hundred people. By the end of the 18th century, Ostrava’s population had dropped to just a thousand. The town was attacked by Danish troops and pillaged by Swedish mercenaries. When Austria (ruled by the Empress Maria Theresa) was defeated by Prussia, the trade route leading from Saxony through Opava, Hlučín and Ostrava to Krakow fell into disuse. The town’s fortunes continued to decline; by the mid-18th century it was only the 53rd largest settlement in Moravia. In the early 19th century Ostrava’s fortunes changed dramatically with the discovery of coal, the founding of the Rudolf Ironworks in Vítkovice (1828) and the construction of the Ferdinand Northern Railway. In 1829 the population of Ostrava was just 1,752; during the next 40 years it grew to almost 7,000. By the end of the 19th century Moravian Ostrava had expanded to become the most important industrial conurbation in the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the turn of the 20th century the city belatedly gained its administrative independence from the smaller towns in the surrounding area, and in 1924 (just a few years after the establishment of the first independent Czechoslovak republic) Moravian Ostrava was merged with several surrounding communities to create a larger metropolitan area (‘Greater Ostrava’) including Přívoz, Vítkovice, Mariánské Hory, Zábřeh nad Odrou, Nová Ves and Hrabůvka – with a total population of 114,000. During the Nazi occupation several more adjacent towns and villages were attached, and the name was changed from Moravian Ostrava to just Ostrava. The Statutory City of Ostrava (in its current form, established in 1992) consists of 34 municipalities and has a total population of 316,000. History of Ostrava (detailed version) |
