SLAVKA SVERAKOVA

We did not stop in Litomysl, and hurried to OLOMOUC, the town where Milan and I studied and met, and got married.

This is the dome of St Wenceslas, just across from where I studied art history and aesthetics for five years. This image allows me to imagine that the western front looks directly at the library where I used to spent long hours every day, the towers just being able to flirt with the window behind which prof Markalous ( a writer, who did not wish to live long enough for sosialism to succeed, because " it would be so boring") and prof Trost supported by Rudolf Chadraba turned us from rough greenhorns into somewhat more sophisticated thinkers about phjlosophy and aesthetics in particular.
The dome lies at the edge of the ancient castle, at present, thoroughly invisible.The castle Olomouc is mentioned in the prestigious Kosma chronicle 1055. The original royal castle lied where my old seminar was; there is still a small memorial to the last Premyslovec killed in 1306.
Olomouc developed on and amongst five hills, well not really hills, more a sudden swelling of the ground under your feet. You do mind it if you carry several heavy books from the University Library to your dormitory or to the seminar building. The last 300 metres it is luckily downhill, only,at the right turn, to make you climb a really steep 100 or so metres again.
The town developed around two squares, a slavonic village at St Morits and long snake of the road passing under the ancient castles towards the river Morava. It flows at the right angle to the long street, which today ends at an enourmous T junction outside the modernist train station. Arount it - the landscape is as flat as around S'Hertogenbosch in Netherlands, or like the Norfolk Broads without the water.
The town was strongly protestant around 1500, but suffered forced re - catholisation before the defeat of the Czech Protestants at Bila Hora 1620. During the occupation by the Swedes (1642 -50) Olomouc was completely devastated, all the population fled, the buildings were destroyed. After 1742 the town was rebuilt as a baroque fortress to protect Vienna against the Prussian Army. In 1876 the fortress and fortification walls were destroyed.

The round tower (housing a chapel of St Anne) in the corner between my old art historical seminar and the cathedral of St Wenceslas are the survivor from the early medieval history, i.e. from the period of romanesque royal palace in Olomouc. What we see today is a result of activities around 1270, the vaults were added around 1350. The choir, unexpectedly large and high, comes from 1616-18. On its northern wall lies an ambit (1350), which utilised the Romanesque walls of the royal palace from 1141. Some windows survived inside the building.
I looked again at the memorial to the last Premyslovec and to Mozart on the wall of so called Hall of the Knights (where I gave a public lecture in 1990; one university student was rather unhappy that " you don't have a man in the centre of your system". "No - I answered, I put water there.")

An Italian architect G.P.Tencalla rebuilt Church of St Michael - next to the monastery, which in my youth was my six- form boarding school, on gothic remnants. Below is St Moritz Church.



( subject of my PhD thesis) - a special type of a hall with the crossvaults in the nave and aisles at the same height. It has two individual towers; the smaller northern one is dated 1412. The sculptures of the Getseman Garden from a niche on the southern outer wall were this time missing. Perhaps to protect them they were removed from the public access? What an irony. Also - this time nobody played Bach's Toccata in D on

the organ. The image on the right is

The City Hall and the Column of St Trinity
in the middle of the main square. The city hall from 1378 was enlarged in the 15th and 16th centuries and the tower with the clock was added. We have not seen the Column of Saint Trinity, it was wrapped up in scaffolding. And the six fountains - where were those?
The square was subjected to so much roadworks, blocks, no entries, barriers etc. that its space was all but killed. No wonder - I escaped to the river that two years ago flooded the city and the surrounding villages. On the other side of the river Morava we saw the proud building of Hradisko. Built by Tencalla in 1686 finished 1736.
It is on a site where there was a Slavonic settlement in 9thC, and then 1078 Premyslovci founded Benedictine monastery, in 1150 it was taken over by the Premonstrate Order. The monastery was abolished in 1784 - the building served as military hospital.

The road to Hranice, Teplice and Roznov let us glance at Svaty Kopecek above Olomouc, a monastery and baroque church. The countryside is hilly and forested but in some way totally uneventful. It is a relief therefore to glance at Radhost. We found the turn to the left from the Middle Becva and drove up to Pustevny, a collective name for three wooden buildings designed by Jurkovic, whose other buildings we would see in Luhacovice Spa later.

Slavka Sverakova