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 a 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 young monarch's death 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.

Poles in an Olomouc prison
More than a century later, another of the great Poles was sent to Olomouc: Hugo Kołłątaj, an Enlightenment reformer of education, sub-chancellor of the Crown, a pillar of the patriotic party during the Great Sejm and one of the co-founders of the 3rd May Constitution. However, Kołłątaj arrived in the Moravian capital not of his own accord, but as an Austrian prisoner of state. After the fall of the Kościuszko Uprising in 1794, he intended to make his way through Galicia to Venice. Handed over to the Austrian authorities in Przemyśl, he was arrested and imprisoned in Olomouc and the Josefstadt fortress in the Czech town of Jaroměř. Hugo Kołłątaj was imprisoned in Olomouc twice (December 1794-February 1795; July 1798-October 1802). He regained his freedom only in the autumn of 1802. One of Kołłątaj's most important works was written during his stay in Olomouc - the three-volume Critical Study of the Principles of History on the Origins of the Human Race, in which he presented original thoughts on the origins of philosophy and an anthropogeographical concept of man and his place in the natural world.

A plaque commemorating Hugo Kołłątaj, designed by Professor Marek Mielczarek, was placed in 2015 on the wall of the historic Jesuit college in Olomouc, which (after the dissolution of the order) housed a prison, next to an existing plaque dedicated to the Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. Nearby, there is also a plaque commemorating Jan III Sobieski, whose author is Dr Artur Lubos. Both commemorations were initiated - in agreement with the Olomouc authorities - by the Częstochowa-based "Silva Rerum Polonarum" Foundation. The plaques were funded by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

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, just like Kołłątaj, prisoner in the Olomouc fortress, after his release one of the leaders of the "democrats" party in Galicia; or Tadeusz Romanowicz - leader of the "democrats" party in Galicia.democrats" 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.