In the historical capital of Moravia, Olomouc, you can find numerous souvenirs that testify to its links with our country. Few know or remember that one of the Polish rulers was secretly murdered here. On the other hand, John III Sobieski admired the architecture of the local Jesuit church and the Bishop's Palace, and Hugo Kołłątaj was imprisoned in the Olomouc fortress.

Olomouc (Czech: Olomouc, German: Olmütz), the historical capital of Moravia and today an important academic and tourist centre of the Czech Republic, is located just over 120 km from the Polish border. Olomouc's extensive Old Town is filled with numerous monuments. Among the most significant are the two symbols of the city - the highest Baroque Holy Trinity Column in the Czech Republic (a votive offering to protect Olomouc from a plague) and the Gothic Town Hall with its astronomical clock, as well as numerous palaces and churches, including the Gothic St. Wenceslas Cathedral and St. Maurice's Church, and the Baroque St. Mary of the Snow (Jesuits) and St. Michael (Dominicans). Due to its location close to the Polish border, the history of the former capital of Moravia has many links with our country.

Secret murder of the Polish ruler
. Today, the city is a destination for many Polish tourists. Probably not many of them realise that a Polish ruler was killed near Olomouc Cathedral in August 1306. He was the 17-year-old Wenceslas III, King of Bohemia and Hungary, and nominal, albeit ephemeral, King of Poland, who was secretly murdered on his way to Malopolska, where he was on his way to deal with his rival, the Duke of Sandomierz, Władysław the Short and crown himself in Krakow. The death of the young monarch not only ended the 450-year reign of the Přemyslids in Bohemia and caused the collapse of the ephemeral Central European empire of the last representatives of this dynasty, but also made it significantly easier for Lokietek to reassume power in Krakow.

Sobieski in Olomouc
On his way to Vienna, John III Sobieski stopped in Olomouc on 26 August 1683. In a letter he wrote to his wife, Queen Marysieńka, the following day, he mentioned his stay in Olomouc, his overnight stay in a tenement opposite the town hall, and the famous work of the town hall clock with its moving figures, already one of the town's attractions at the end of the 17th century, which the proud hosts wanted to dazzle the Polish monarch with: "So I had to spend the night in the town (...). They put me up in a tenement (...), and this was for the (...) sake of their clock, so that I could see it when the little people were turning around comme des marionettes before it struck". The astronomical clock (and its chiming figures) can also be seen today on the façade of Olomouc Town Hall. The current, social-realist clock dates from 1955, as the one mentioned by King Jan III was destroyed during the Second World War.

Sobieski was greatly impressed by the architecture of the Jesuit church and the palace of the Olomouc bishops: "The Jesuit fathers (...) did me great honour by calling (...) Salvator in their orations. Today I was with them and in the bishop's palace (...); both could stand among Rome". The Polish monarch's stay in Olomouc is commemorated by a bilingual plaque (founded in 2018) [PHOT. 4] on the façade of one of the townhouses on the Upper Square.

Poles associated with Olomouc
Of course, there were many more Poles associated with the history of Olomouc in various ways. For example, canon Jan Iwicki - 16th century theologian and counter-reformation political writer, lecturer at the Olomouc Jesuit College; Tadeusz Romanowicz - January Uprising insurgent, like Kołłątaj a prisoner of the Olomouc fortress, and after his release one of the leaders of the "democrats" party in Galicia; ordemocrats" in Galicia, or engineer Stanislaw Rogalski - world-famous aircraft designer, co-author of the RWD series of aircraft (short for: Rogalski, Wigura, Drzewiecki), after the war the author of the designs for the lunar vehicle under the Apollo programme of the American NASA.