Hradiště

Hradiště stands on the Morava near the Hungarian frontier. King Ottokar II founded the town in 1257 to protect the nearby monastery of Velehrad, first calling it Nový Velehrad. Stone walls replaced its original wooden palisades in the fourteenth century, and its fortifications were strengthened in the centuries that followed. The name Uherské Hradiště was first used in 1587.

The frontier town faced raids and wars over many generations, including fighting during the Thirty Years' War and Ottoman incursions during the Austro-Turkish War of 1716–1718. Jesuits settled in Hradiště in 1644 and established a college, school and church dedicated to Saint Francis Xavier. The fortress held out until it was captured by Prussian troops in 1742; it ceased to serve as a fortress in the 1780s.