Around three hours by train from the Romanesque grandeur, Gothic turrets and Baroque hustle and bustle of Prague, lies Ostrava. Czechia’s third largest city, it’s the capital of Moravia-Silesia, a region that straddles mountains and a former industrial heartland that was once the engine of empires.
Punctuated by ponds and ancient hedgerows, expanses of rolling green countryside and bright yellow rape flowers stretch beyond the train windows. Passengers sip coffee and munch on unusually good railway snacks. Brief glimpses of tall silos, red brick chimneys, manufacturing plants and warehouses with asterisk smash in their windows, and, of course, the electricity pylons that stomp across the land, serve as reminders of the working past. But then they are gone, giving way to a tiny white church with a tall spire and the classical form of a small Bohemian mansion nestled into a gentle hill.
A bitter brew for tough people
Arriving in Ostrava, cargo engines and freight wagons line the tracks, hinting at the steel and coal production with which the area was synonymous for over 150 years. Here, the people are renowned for their toughness, so much so that an extra bitter beer was created just for them at the Radegast brewery, where visitors can take tours and discover steel mash tuns silhouetted against fields of gold rape outside.
For just 10 euros, the two-hour experience includes the packaging plant, the cellars, and the brewhouse, where live silvery trout from the local Morávka river help to monitor the quality of the water used. At the end, of course, there’s the chance to taste this brew named for a local pagan God with the face of a lion. It’s a distinctive concoction, whose equally distinctive strapline “Life is bitter, thank God” has kept hardworking locals (and people all over Czechia) happy since 1970.
Tours and music festivals at the soviet-era blast furnace
Much of that local work, for generations, was at the vast industrial zone of Dolni Vitkovice, owned by the Rothschilds before nationalisation, and one of the few places where coal was not only mined, but also milled into coke, and fed into a gigantic blast furnace to form pig iron and steel, all on the same site. Closed in 1998, in an effort to decarbonise and clean up the city, the vast infrastructure comprising access towers, pipelines, gas storage tanks and, of course, the furnace, is an urban explorer’s paradise.
It was designated a national cultural monument in 2002 and now houses a stunning auditorium and events venue baptised Gong, where raw concrete meets corten steel and culture in a dynamic architectural dream.
Music festivals such as Beats for Love also take place against this backdrop in the summer. All year-round visitors can tour the site, climbing the 77-metre Bolt Tower, for around 12 euros, and venturing inside the decommissioned Soviet-era blast furnace itself. Although children under 15 must be accompanied, there is plenty for younger ones to see and do at the interactive Science and Technology Centre, or Children’s World for example.
Mining the ghosts of the past
Visits are also hosted at the nearby mines that closed in 1993, where former miners run tours, praise the Rothschilds as geniuses and speak of the camaraderie of days gone by.
On grapple hooks high above the factory floor hang former workers’ clothing, like ghosts of the past. Visitors follow their journey to work, through the showers, canteen, and plump sofas in back offices where operations were run.
Meanwhile, over at the coke milling and washing plant, we learn of the region’s own Klondike moment, when some locals realised it was possible to pan the river for coal dust, creating a rush of black gold. One community even used to live on the steaming slag heap, burning through three pairs of shoes a week due to the heat underfoot.
Hat-making and honey cake
From toes to top hats. Other industries nearby included the Tonak Hat Museum, in the “town of hats” Nový Jičín, where video footage and vintage hat stretchers trace the development of the brand Hückel, dating back to 1799, all the way through to nationalisation in 1946, and beyond. Why not buy a rabbit fur fedora or a trendy baker boy cap and watch the world go by in the sunshine on the beautiful town square, a protected monument?
Coffee and cake are also produced on an industrial scale just half an hour away at Frýdek Mistek, where the Marlenka Factory was founded by an Armenian refugee from scratch in 2003 and now produces tens of thousands of Eastern honey cakes a week. Take a tour, or pop into the cafe that serves sweet delicacies to visitors and offers a verdant parkland created for the workers and locals.
Beat the crowds in authentic Ostrava
Back in Ostrava itself, guests will find a pleasant city with an attractive square, where the pollution is long gone, a university campus borders the river near a park with a Red Army monument, and a protected interwar “New City Hall” in a dominant Czech Modernist style catches the eye.
There is a wealth of small guesthouses and hotels to choose from on the Visit Ostrava website, as well as more corporate business hotels with spas. It is an up-and-coming Eastern European destination that boasts access to hiking, golf and hi-octane pursuits in the mountains (more on that in another article) and has just hosted a Czech tourism convention that sought to put the region on the map. So, for people looking to find an authentic Czechia and avoid anything globalised or overrun with other tourists, the time to visit Ostrava is now.
