Bohumín: the little town by the ford, the town by the station and the meanders of the Oder

At the confluence of the Oder and the Olše

Bohumín belongs to the Karviná District and lies in the Czech part of historical Cieszyn Silesia. Here the border with Poland is formed mostly by the floodplains of the Oder and the Olše, which merge into a single river in Bohumín². The confluence lies near the settlement of Kopytov. Here the Oder leaves Czechia, and Bohumín is the last Czech town along its course. The terrain is flat and lies in the Ostrava Basin. The town covers roughly 31 km²; its highest point is Záblatský kopec (248 m), and its lowest point is the confluence of the Oder and the Olše. According to the town, this is also the lowest point of the entire Moravian-Silesian Region².

Bohumín is made up of seven districts that used to be separate municipalities: Nový Bohumín, Starý Bohumín, Skřečoň, Záblatí, Pudlov, Vrbice and Šunychl with the settlement of Kopytov. More than half of the inhabitants live in Nový Bohumín¹. The town's coat of arms, with a winged railway wheel, is recent: it was designed by the heraldist Jiří Louda and approved in 1967 as the coat of arms of Nový Bohumín³.

The little town by the ford

Bohumín grew up by a ford across the Oder where trade routes crossed: the salt road from Moravia to Kraków and the amber road from Hungary to the Baltic⁴. The first written mention of the village of Bogun comes from an undated charter, which the town museum dates to 1256–1262⁵. The oldest Czech form of the name was Bohuň, from the personal name Bohun, and the name suggests that it was a Slavic settlement. In 1292 the parish church of the Virgin Mary is mentioned, and the same charter is the oldest record of the German name Oderberg⁴.

In the Middle Ages Bohumín belonged to the Duchy of Racibórz. On the opposite, left bank of the Oder stood Barutswerde Castle, the seat of the lords of the estate. The settlement below the castle and the later town grew up on the right bank, in today's Starý Bohumín⁶. According to a charter from 1373, Bohumín was a subject market town⁴, and at the beginning of the 15th century it was raised to the status of a town⁵. In the 1520s the estate was acquired by the Hohenzollerns. They adopted Lutheranism, and in the 16th century the local parish also became Lutheran.

In the 1620s, during the Thirty Years' War, the estate passed to the Henckel von Donnersmarck family, bankers and mining entrepreneurs⁴. The family adhered to Protestant Pietism, which is why they built their own tomb in a corner of the cemetery by the parish church. The circular building resembles a Romanesque rotunda, with the burial vault underground. It was given its present form in 1752, and the last male descendant of the Bohumín branch of the family was buried in it on 16 March 1803⁷. In 2001–2002 it was converted into the Chapel of the Virgin Mary. The castle on the left bank was later rebuilt as a Baroque chateau. Today it stands in Chałupki in Poland and houses a hotel⁶.

The border on the Oder and the old square

In 1742 the peace that ended the First Silesian War divided both Silesia and Bohumín. The left-bank part with the castle went to Prussia, the right-bank town remained part of the Habsburg Monarchy, and the border ran along the Oder⁶. Bohumín thus lost its noble seat and became a border town. The Prussian part became the municipality of Annaberg, today's Chałupki. The estate was eventually bought by the Counts Larisch-Mönnich, who held it until 1945.

According to the town museum, the oldest witness of local religious life is the parish Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary⁵. The masonry Gothic church replaced a wooden chapel, probably in the 14th century, and in 1620 it was rebuilt in the Renaissance style. On 22 August 1850 lightning struck the tower, and the fire badly damaged the tower and the roof truss and destroyed most of the furnishings. The Gothic vault was then replaced by a lower barrel vault with frescoes, so the tracery of two Gothic windows has survived in the attic to this day⁸. The coronation of the painting of Our Lady of the Rosary of Starý Bohumín in 2004 restored the church's status as a place of pilgrimage⁸.

On Freedom Square stand the former town hall, Art Nouveau houses and a late Baroque sandstone statue of Saint John of Nepomuk, probably erected in 1829. When it was being restored in 2002, 54 historical coins were found in its pedestal⁹. The Starý Bohumín treasure is now on display in the town museum⁵. Near the border, on the right bank of the Oder, stands the small Chapel of the Holy Cross, possibly from 1733. In 1756 two local lay brothers were given permission to set up a hermitage next to it, and after the hermitage the chapel is popularly called Pustyňa¹⁰. At the end of the war, after bombing, only its outer walls remained; today it has been restored.

A station in a marshy forest

The turning point came in 1847. The Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway, which was to connect Vienna with Galicia, reached Bohumín from Lipník nad Bečvou, and the first train arrived on 1 May¹¹. The station, however, was not built next to the old town. The townspeople did not want it, and the parish priest also opposed building on parish land, so Countess Rudnická sold the railway her marshy plot in the forest of the municipality of Šunychl¹², about three kilometres south of the old town¹³. Starý Bohumín then gradually lost its importance⁶.

In 1848 a connecting line ran from Bohumín to Annaberg in Prussia, and with it came a rail link between Vienna and Berlin. At first there was no bridge over the Oder: passengers crossed the river in flat-bottomed boats and changed to a Prussian train on the other bank. The railway bridge opened in 1849 and has been blown up three times in its history¹⁴. In 1869 the first trains of the Košice-Bohumín Railway set off from Bohumín; the line then ran via Cieszyn and Žilina all the way to Košice. Trains ran along the whole line from 18 March 1872¹⁵. It was the first and for a long time the main railway link between the Czech lands and Slovakia.

Bohumín thus became one of the most important railway junctions. Lines from Přerov, from Čadca and from Poland meet here. The station building got its present appearance during a reconstruction in 1901–1904¹² and is a listed cultural monument. A steel footbridge leads across the tracks. Its oldest part dates from the 19th century, and the whole footbridge is 170 metres long, not counting the stairs¹⁶. During modernisation in 2003–2005 the state invested CZK 2.6 billion in the junction¹⁷. Direct trains run from Bohumín to Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary and Germany.

Red-brick Nový Bohumín

Around the station, a new settlement grew up in the cadastral area of Šunychl, officially named Šunychl-Bohumín-nádraží. First the marsh had to be drained and the forest cleared¹⁸. The settlement grew rapidly and soon overtook old Bohumín as well as its parent village of Šunychl. On 14 April 1924 it was renamed Nový Bohumín, and on 16 October 1924 the government raised it to the status of a town¹⁸. According to the town's website, the rapid construction of flats, offices and workers' colonies “did not allow historically interesting architectural monuments to come into being, nor a dominant square”¹⁸.

The exception is a group of Neo-Gothic buildings of unplastered red brick. The Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, designed by the local builder Josef Berger, was built in 1892–1894 on land provided free of charge by Count Heinrich Larisch-Mönnich. It cost almost 56,000 guilders, 30,000 of which were donated by the Prince-Bishop of Breslau, Georg Kopp¹⁹. Next to it stands the complex of former German schools, built in stages between 1893 and 1914, which now houses the town hall²⁰. In the same style, a Lutheran church in the shape of a Latin cross was built on land donated by the count. It was designed by the Brno architect Julius Leischnig and consecrated on 15 October 1901; believers from the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden also contributed to its construction²¹. Nový Bohumín also had a Jewish community. A synagogue was built here in 1900, and in 1904 the hotelier Viktor Lustig was elected mayor of the municipality⁵.

Factories and the tram

Industry came with the railway. In 1885 the Berlin industrialist Albert Hahn and Heinrich Eisner founded a large pipe works in Šunychl, and in 1896 a wire works was established in the cadastral area of Pudlov²². In 1958 the two enterprises were merged into Bohumín Ironworks and Wire Works⁵. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, Count Larisch's mineral oil refineries, a pine pitch refinery, a soap and candle factory, brickworks and, in 1904, Rudolf Goldschmied's chemical factory were also founded²². The chemical factory became today's Bochemie; from the end of the First World War it produced saccharin. After 1989 the ironworks and wire works were split up, and in 2021 the traditional production of cast-iron radiators came to an end. The largest companies in the town today include Bekaert, Bochemie, Bonatrans, České dráhy, Rockwool and ŽDB Drátovna².

In 1902 a horse-drawn tram began running between the station and the square in Starý Bohumín. It was the first narrow-gauge line in the entire later network in the Ostrava area, with a gauge of 760 mm²³. After less than a year the horses were replaced by steam cars, and in 1916 the line was electrified²³. The Bohumín tram made its last run in 1973²³, and today rails set in the paving recall its route in several places.

The twentieth century

After the collapse of Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland disputed the Cieszyn region. In the summer of 1920 the Cieszyn region was divided⁵, and the whole territory of today's Bohumín went to Czechoslovakia¹³. The Olše became the border with Poland, the Oder the border with Germany. A Czech primary school was established in Starý Bohumín, and in 1921 Bohumín also gained a Czechoslovak Realgymnasium. On 6 July 1930 President T. G. Masaryk became an honorary citizen of Nový Bohumín²⁴.

In 1936 the infantry blockhouse MO-S 5 Na trati, part of Czechoslovakia's pre-war fortifications, was built in concrete near Bohumín. It is atypical: the railway line divided it into two separate blockhouses, connected by a 22-metre passage under the embankment²⁵. After Munich, in October 1938, Bohumín was seized by Poland, and the Polish army occupied the blockhouse without a fight. In September 1939 Bohumín was occupied by Nazi Germany, and until 1945 it was part of the German Reich. The Germans tore the armoured cupolas and gun embrasures out of the blockhouses²⁵. Today the Bohumín Military History Club runs a museum in it. After the 2024 flood the blockhouse was closed, and it reopened in June 2026²⁶.

The synagogue in Nový Bohumín was burned down in 1940²⁷. Only a handful of Bohumín's Jews survived the Holocaust. Since 2004 a memorial on the Square of the Future has been dedicated to the victims²⁷. During the war there was also a forced labour camp for Poles here, commemorated by a memorial to 104 Polish victims from 1942–1944²⁸. On 28 August 1944 American aircraft bombed the railway junction, and at the end of the war the retreating German army destroyed the station with explosive charges¹⁷. In 1945 Bohumín was liberated by the Red Army and returned to Czechoslovakia. After the war most of the German-speaking inhabitants were displaced.

After the war the municipalities began to merge. In 1949 they were joined into a single town named Bohumín for the first time, but the union did not last, and in the 1950s the municipalities separated again. Nový and Starý Bohumín merged for good in 1973, and 15 months later they were joined by Pudlov, Skřečoň, Vrbice, Záblatí and Šunychl⁵. The town was then hit hard by the 1997 flood, which also swept away the Antošovice footbridge over the Oder.

The border meanders of the Oder

Between Starý Bohumín and the confluence with the Olše, the Oder flows freely in bends. The protected stretch is about 7.5 kilometres long and has five large meanders; the Czech-Polish border runs down the middle of the riverbed²⁹. The river changes its bed on its own: it forms gravel bars, oxbows and pools, and in doing so it also slightly shifts the state border. The meanders drew attention to themselves during the 1997 flood, when one of them broke through. After surveys involving WWF, it was decided not to repair the riverbed and to leave the river room. Since 2006 the stretch has been protected as the Oder Border Meanders natural monument, and it opened to the public in May 2007³⁰.

The Eurasian beaver and the Eurasian otter live here, and the common kingfisher and the sand martin nest in the steep banks. According to the town, ornithologists have recorded 188 bird species here, 60 of which breed here³⁰. From time to time the Oder washes up a mammoth's tooth or vertebra. In 2004 a boundary stone from 1742 bearing the imperial crown was found near the confluence. The date 1883 was carved into it later, when the border was changed, and the stone is now in the town museum³¹. Since 2007 the meanders have been paddled in boats rented out by the municipal boat rental in Starý Bohumín.

Bohumín today

Starý Bohumín is connected to Chałupki in Poland by a steel three-arch bridge over the Oder. Construction began on 1 September 1898 and was completed 13 months later. In 1939 the first arch collapsed into the Oder after retreating Polish troops set off an explosive charge, and road traffic was not restored until 1967³². Since September 2026 the bridge has been undergoing a complete renovation, carried out by the Czech and Polish sides in parallel. The European Interreg Czechia–Poland programme covers 80 per cent of the cost of the Czech part³³.

On Freedom Square stands the Art Nouveau Hotel Grüner Baum from 1907. After the war it was renamed the National House. The town bought the dilapidated building in 2008 and had it completely renovated in 2013–2015³⁴. Today it houses the Hotel Pod Zeleným dubem (Under the Green Oak), an information centre and, since 1 July 2016, the town's first museum⁵. According to legend, the Polish king John III Sobieski spent a night at an inn that previously stood on this site.

Petr Bezruč Park lies in Nový Bohumín. It was created from part of a pheasantry that Count Heinrich Larisch-Mönnich donated to the municipality when it decided to erect a monument to Emperor Franz Joseph I. The foundation stone of the English-style park was laid in 1907³⁵. The emperor's bust was removed after the establishment of Czechoslovakia. On 15 September 1947, the poet's 80th birthday, a bust of Petr Bezruč on a glacial erratic boulder was unveiled here, and the park was given his name³⁵.

The philosopher and journalist Milan Šimečka, a signatory of Charter 77, was born in Nový Bohumín³⁶. Another native of Bohumín is the sailor Richard Konkolski, who built his yacht Niké himself in Bohumín and sailed around the world single-handed in it³⁷. The footballer Tomáš Pospíchal, a silver medallist at the 1962 World Cup, was born in Pudlov. The goalkeeper Pavel Srniček, a silver medallist at the 1996 European Championship, is also associated with the town; since 2016 Bohumín's football stadium has borne his name.