Opava

A city of over 60,000 people on the Polish border, Opava is the cultural, economic and administrative center of Czech Silesia. The city has its roots in a village founded on the left bank of the Opava River on the Amber Road, the trade route running from the Adriatic in the south to the Baltic Sea in the north. It was moved across the river in the 12th century, and the first written reference to it, as Opavia, occurs in the year 1195 in the documents of Prince Vladimir of Olomouc. In 1224, the village received city status with the settling of an order of German knights there, and began to grow rapidly in size and importance. By the early 14th century, the region around Opava became a principality under the Czech crown, with Opava as its capital.

When the Hapsburgs lost the majority of Silesia to Prussia in the war of 1742, Opava, known by its German name of Troppau, became the capital of so-called Austrian (later, Czech) Silesia, a primarily German area with large Czech and Polish minorities. It was here that the "Holy Alliance", the monarchs of Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Russia,along with representatives from England and France, met in 1820 after the defeat of Napoleon to formulate a plan for dealing with the revolutionary developments in Italy, and throughout Europe, in the wake of the French Revolution. The city also was the site of the Silesian Assembly from 1860. In 1928, however, the region was joined with Moravia and Opava lost its administrative function, which greatly displeased the German segment of the population, though this became largely moot when the area's German population was expelled following the war in 1945.

Once a walled city, the city's fortifications were torn down in the 19th century and replaced with parks and orchards. The dominant architectural style (and building material) is a Gothic red-brick style from northern Germany, the finest example being the Church of the Assumptionof the Virgin Mary, reconstructed in the 14th century on the ruins of a Romanesque basilica. Other notable historical landmarks in Opava include the early Baroque Church of St. Adalbert and the Gothic Church of the Holy Spirit, built in the 13th century with a crypt containing the remains of the Premyslid princes of Opava. More secular monuments in Opava can be found in the Old Town, such as the Renaissance city tower (known as the Hlaska) built in 1618, the Baroque palaces of the Sobek and Blucher families, and the 17th century Old Provincial House.

The city's strongest industry was textiles up to the middle of the 19th century, when agriculture took its place. The arrival of the railroad in 1855 spurred new growth in the city, and its industry expanded, though not greatly. Unfortunately, the city was the site of a major battle in the last days of the Second World War and it sustained extensive damage, with 90% of it reduced to ruins. Then city was practically depopulated by the expulsion of its German population after the war, leaving it almost non-existent as a center of population. Since then, Opava has been completely rebuilt, with a great deal of new construction.