Three days in Olomouc: the capital Moravia lost, and never quite got over

Two nights in the centre: the squares and the UNESCO column on arrival, a full day at the cathedral end of town, and two baroque interiors on the last morning.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Olomouc
Places
8 across 3 days
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Olomouc ran Moravia for six hundred years and then lost the job. Brno took the title in 1641; the Swedes arrived the following year, held the city for eight, and left so little of it standing that the job never came back. What the seventeenth century took away, the eighteenth put back in stone: a rebuilt centre of baroque churches, palaces and fountains that is now second in size only to Prague's.

It is also a university town, and has been since 1573. Something like a fifth of the people you pass in the street are students, which is why a city with this much ecclesiastical stonework has cheap beer, late bars and a canteen culture, and why nothing here feels preserved for visitors.

Two nights covers it comfortably. The centre is two linked squares and a cathedral quarter fifteen minutes' walk away, and the pleasure of the place is that you can see all of it without ever standing in a line.

Highlights

  • The Holy Trinity Column, a UNESCO site in its own right, standing free at the top of the main square
  • An astronomical clock rebuilt in the 1950s with factory workers where the saints used to be
  • Six stone fountains on Roman themes, scattered across the old town
  • The Přemyslid palace, the oldest building in the city, with Romanesque windows still in the wall
  • Olomouc cheese, which is a protected local product and smells like a serious mistake

Where to stay

Olomouc, two nights

A hundred thousand people live here, which makes Olomouc the sixth city of the country and by some distance the least visited of the six worth seeing. The historic preservation zone is the second largest in the Czech Republic and it shows: the entire old town is baroque or older, with the university buildings woven through it.

Stay in the old town itself, which is small enough that anywhere inside the ring of parks is five minutes from the main square. Prices are low by Czech standards and very low by anything else's.

Day by day

Day 1 in Olomouc

The two squares, the column and the clock

Olomouc keeps its centre in two squares joined at a corner, and the first afternoon is simply walking them. The upper one is the size of a small park, with the town hall standing free in the middle of it and terraces down every side.

The column in front of the town hall is the reason the city has a UNESCO listing of its own. It went up over nearly forty years as a thank offering after a plague, it is thirty-five metres of saints and gilding, and there is a small chapel inside the base that opens occasionally.

Then walk round to the far side of the town hall for the clock, which is the strangest thing in the city. The original was fifteenth century and was destroyed in the last week of the war. What replaced it in the 1950s is a mosaic of workers, chemists and athletes where the apostles used to be, and it remains the most complete piece of socialist realism anywhere in the country.

Eat on the square afterwards, then find the fountains. There are six of them, all on Roman gods, and hunting the lot down is the best possible excuse for an evening walk.

  1. 15:00

    Upper Square

    Architecture

    The main square, big, open and lined with terraces, with the town hall standing on its own in the middle. Most of what you will look at over three days is within two minutes of it.

  2. 16:15

    Holy Trinity Column

    Other

    Thirty-five metres of baroque stonework, begun in the 1710s and consecrated in 1754 with the empress present. Reckoned the biggest single group of baroque sculpture in Central Europe, and listed by UNESCO on its own account. Free, and there is a chapel in the base.

  3. 17:30

    Astronomical clock

    Other

    Set in the north wall of the town hall, first built in the fifteenth century, wrecked in 1945 and remade in the 1950s in mosaic and metal. The figures are a blacksmith, a chemist and a sportsman rather than saints. It performs at noon and takes several minutes.

  4. 19:00

    Dinner on the square

    Eat

    The terraces on the main square are the one thing here priced for visitors, and even then it is not much. Order the fried cheese if you want the full local experience.

With more time: The six fountains are the walk to do with the last of the light: Neptune and one other on the lower square, Mercury behind the shopping arcade, Triton on a small square to the south, Hercules beside the town hall and Caesar on his horse at the top end, which the city claims as its founder on no evidence whatsoever.

Day 2 in Olomouc

The cathedral quarter and the oldest building in the city

Fifteen minutes east of the square the city changes character completely. This is the ecclesiastical end: a cathedral, an archbishop's palace, a seminary and a Romanesque palace, all inside what was once a separate walled precinct.

Start with the palace, which is the oldest building in Olomouc and now holds the archdiocesan museum. Its Romanesque windows are still in the wall, carved and doubled, and downstairs the exposed stonework runs back to the twelfth century. This was the seat of the Přemyslid dukes, and the last king of that line was murdered in Olomouc in 1306, which ended the dynasty that had ruled the Czech lands since the ninth century.

The cathedral next door has been rebuilt so many times that only the crypt gives away its age. Its south tower is the tallest in Moravia and the second tallest church tower in the country, and the interior is a nineteenth century idea of what a Gothic cathedral ought to look like, done very thoroughly.

Come back into town along the park on the old walls and finish in the modern art museum, which is a better collection than a city this size should have.

  1. 09:30

    The Premyslid palace

    Visit

    The oldest building in Olomouc, Romanesque underneath and restored to show it, now the archdiocesan museum. Carved twin windows in the original wall, a round chapel upstairs, and the treasury in the cellars. Two hours if you like this sort of thing.

  2. 11:30

    St. Wenceslas Cathedral

    Religious

    A thousand years of rebuilding with a neo-Gothic finish, and the tallest spire in Moravia. The crypt holds the treasury and the relics; the nave is enormous and usually empty. Free to enter, and next door to the palace where Franz Joseph was made emperor in December 1848.

  3. 14:30

    Museum of Modern Art

    Culture

    Czech twentieth century art in an art nouveau building near the lower square, strong on the temporary shows and with a small lookout tower on the roof. Ninety minutes, and the best rainy afternoon in the city.

With more time: The gardens along the old fortifications below the cathedral are where the city goes to sit, and the botanical garden and its greenhouses are across the stream from them. With a car, the archbishop's summer palace and gardens at Kroměříž are forty minutes south and carry a UNESCO listing of their own.

Day 3 in Olomouc

Two baroque interiors, and the tram to the station

The last morning is two churches that look like nothing from outside and are worth the trip on their own.

The first is plain to the point of dullness on the street and one of the finest baroque interiors in Central Europe once you are through the door, with three domes, a great deal of pink and grey stucco, and a painting of a visibly pregnant Virgin that the church has never been entirely comfortable about.

The second is the big Gothic one by the market, whose organ was the largest in Central Europe when it was finished in the 1740s and is still among the largest anywhere. Climb the tower afterwards for the view over the roofs, then take the tram east.

  1. 09:30

    St. Michael's church

    Religious

    Three domes, an interior of stucco, gilt and rose-coloured marble, and a startling amount of light. One of the great baroque church interiors in this part of Europe, hidden behind a facade that gives nothing away. Twenty minutes and free.

  2. 10:45

    St. Moritz church

    Religious

    Gothic, finished in 1398, and home to an organ of the 1740s that was the largest in this part of Europe when it was built. Recitals through the summer and a festival in early autumn. The tower is open and the climb is short.

  3. 12:00

    Lunch before the train

    Eat

    Take a student lunch menu in one of the canteens off the square. Two courses for the price of a coffee elsewhere, and the tram to the station leaves from the corner.

With more time: With a spare half day, the pilgrimage basilica on the wooded hill east of the city is twenty minutes out on the bus, has a view over the whole Haná plain, and shares its hilltop with the zoo, which is a genuinely good one.

Before you go

Getting in

Trains from Prague take a little over two hours and run at least hourly, with private operators competing on the route, so the fares are among the cheapest long-distance tickets in the country. Brno is an hour and a half south, Ostrava under an hour east, and Kraków is reachable in a day.

Olomouc hlavní nádraží sits about a kilometre and a half east of the old town. Trams leave from directly outside and run to the edge of the centre in five minutes, which is quicker and more pleasant than the walk along the main road.

Getting around

Everything in this trip is inside a twenty minute walk. The two squares are joined at the corner, the cathedral quarter is a quarter of an hour east, and the trams exist for the station and the outer parks rather than for anything you need.

The old town is flat, which after Prague and Krumlov feels like a gift. The one climb is the tower of the Gothic church on the square, and there is a lift for part of it.

Eating, drinking and the cheese

Olomoucké tvarůžky is a ripened cheese made in a village thirty kilometres from here, sold in small yellow discs, almost fat free and startlingly pungent. It appears fried, in soup, with beer, and as a bar snack that clears the room. Try it once; the locals are watching, and they enjoy this.

Beyond that, the student economy runs the town. Lunch menus in the centre are cheap enough to be suspicious of and are usually excellent, two microbreweries in the old town brew their own, and the bars behind the main square stay open on nights when a city this size has no business being awake.

When to come

Late spring and early autumn. The city holds an international organ festival around September and October, built around the great instrument in the Gothic church by the main square, and the concerts are cheap and easy to get into.

Winter is cold on the Haná plain and the centre gets a small, unpretentious Christmas market on both squares. It is one of the few in the country that is still mostly for locals.

Olomouc is the city Czech people name when you ask them where they would send a visitor who has already done Prague. It is small, complete, unrestored in the good sense, and cheap enough that three days here costs less than one in the capital.

Two nights, flat streets, six fountains and a cheese you will remember longer than you want to.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Olomouc worth going out of your way for?
If you like baroque architecture and dislike crowds, it is the best value in the country. It is also directly on the Prague to Kraków line, so for a lot of trips it costs nothing but the nights. What it does not have is a single famous sight, so nobody will be impressed when you say you went.
Olomouc or Brno?
Brno is bigger, has the modernist villa and the caves, and more going on at night. Olomouc is prettier, cheaper and more compact, and its centre is the better one to simply walk around. They are ninety minutes apart, and the honest answer is both.
Do I need to book anything?
No. Nothing here sells out, the churches are free, and the museums take walk-ins. The exception is a concert during the autumn organ festival, which is worth checking before you fix your dates.
What is the cheese actually like?
Sharp, salty, ammoniac and nearly fat free, sold in thin discs the size of a coin. Fried in batter it is excellent. Left in a warm room it is a public order issue. It carries a protected designation, so the real thing comes only from one village in the region.
Is it a good base?
A useful one. Kroměříž and its UNESCO gardens are forty minutes away, the Jeseníky mountains an hour and a half north, and Brno and Ostrava are both under ninety minutes by train.
Can I change it?
Yes. Open it in your account and it becomes an ordinary trip: move a day, add the concerts you have booked, drop whatever does not appeal.