Olomouc

Olomouc stands on the Morava, and its hill-fort on the Wenceslas Hill was the natural centre of Moravia: the Přemyslid princes ruled from it, Cosmas of Prague names it in 1055, and the bishopric restored there in 1063 gathered large estates. King Wenceslaus I founded the royal town in front of the fort's western walls between 1239 and 1248, uniting three older villages around the Upper and Lower Squares. Stone walls enclosed the whole complex by 1321, and in 1306 the last Přemyslid king, Wenceslaus III, was murdered here as he prepared a campaign for the Polish crown. A merchants' house begun in 1378 became the town hall in 1409. In 1381 Margrave Jobst set the cathedral on fire in a quarrel with the bishop, and in 1398 the worst fire of the Middle Ages swept the town.

Bishop John the Iron led the defence of Olomouc against the Hussites. King Sigismund gave the town the right to coin money in 1422, the oldest recorded mint privilege in Moravia, and the Hussite armies besieged it in 1422 and 1425 and plundered its surroundings until 1437. After the preaching of John of Capistrano in 1451 the Jews were driven out in 1454. In 1469 the estates proclaimed Matthias Corvinus king of Bohemia in the Cathedral of Saint Wenceslas, and in 1479 he made the Treaty of Olomouc with Vladislaus II.

The Jesuits came in 1566 and founded their university in 1573, the first in Moravia. The Swedish army under Torstensson took the town in 1642, and it was the Swedes' largest base in Central Europe until 1650; imperial troops besieged it in 1644 and 1645. After this Olomouc could not keep its rivalry with Brno, but in 1758 it held out against a Prussian siege and Maria Theresa granted it the title of royal capital. The bishopric became an archbishopric in 1777, and the Trinity Column was raised from 1716 to 1754 after the plague.