Karviná: princely Fryštát, vanished Karvinná and a spa on the Olše

A town on the Olše and on the border

Karviná belongs to the Moravian-Silesian Region and lies in the historical territory of Cieszyn Silesia. Half of the town's boundary is formed by the state border with Poland. The town is crossed by the Olše, which rises near the Polish village of Istebna in the Silesian Beskids and flows into the Oder near Bohumín. From Cieszyn to Karviná the river forms the Czech-Polish border; in Karviná-Ráj it leaves it. The town covers 57.52 km², and its highest point is Rájský kopec (306.9 m), with a view of the Beskids. It is divided into nine districts: Fryštát, Doly, Lázně Darkov, Ráj, Staré Město, Nové Město, Mizerov, Hranice and Louky.

In Polish the town is called Karwina, in German Karwin, and the name is derived from the Old Polish word karw. At the beginning of the 20th century it was spelled Karvinná, with a double n. The town regards a charter issued by Duke Władysław of Opole in 1268¹ as the first written record of its territory, and celebrates that year as the year of its foundation². Karviná took over its coat of arms from Fryštát: according to the oldest town seal, from 1529, it shows half of a golden eagle on a blue field and half of a green linden trefoil on a silver field³. A legend explains it by saying that an eagle supposedly showed the duke where to move the town.

Princely Fryštát

The original settlement lay lower down by the Olše, in today's Staré Město. Because of frequent floods, a new centre, Fryštát, grew up a few kilometres away; its German name, Freistadt, means “free town”. This happened at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries⁴ in the Duchy of Cieszyn, ruled by the Cieszyn branch of the Piast dynasty. After Cieszyn, Fryštát was the second oldest town in the duchy, and it lay on a trade route from Hungary to Silesia and on to the Baltic. In 1327 Duke Casimir I swore an oath of fealty to the Bohemian King John of Luxembourg, and the duchy became a fief of the Bohemian Crown.

The chateau stands on the site of the medieval ducal residence of the Piasts. After a great fire in April 1511, Duke Casimir II had it rebuilt in the Renaissance style. In 1543 Elisabeth of Habsburg, daughter of Ferdinand I, stopped here on her way to Kraków to marry Sigismund II Augustus. The last Piast of Fryštát was Duke Frederick Casimir; after his death Fryštát was permanently separated from the duchy, and in 1572 it was bought by Václav Cigán of Slupsko. From 1749 to 1792 it belonged to the Irish noble family of the Counts Taaffe⁵.

In 1792 Fryštát was bought by the Counts Larisch-Mönnich⁵. They settled in the chateau and gave it its present Empire-style appearance. After 1945 the chateau was used by the Ostrava-Karviná Mines company and later by the Municipal National Committee; it opened to the public in 1997. The main entrance is flanked by two Baroque sandstone statues of Hercules from 1682, moved here in 1971 from the chateau in Ráj; folk tradition links them with the outlaws Juráš and Ondráš. An overhead corridor connects the chateau with the Lottyhaus on the square, which houses a branch of the National Gallery in Prague.

The square, the town hall and the churches

The historic core of Fryštát has been an urban heritage zone since 1992. In the middle of Masaryk Square stands a five-metre cast-iron fountain from 1900, designed by the Viennese firm of Georg Wirth⁶. It is decorated with dolphins and four small figures of children representing the seasons of the year. The old town hall gained its present Empire-style appearance during a reconstruction in 1836–1837; its tower is Renaissance. The gable bears a polychrome coat of arms with the date 1605, and a wrought-iron chain that once served as a pillory hangs on the corner.

The Gothic Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, originally dedicated to the Virgin Mary⁴, is considered the oldest architectural monument in Karviná. Its masonry tower was built after the fire of 1511. The Moravian Chapel was added in 1611–1617, when the church was Protestant, and contains the Renaissance tombstone of Václav Cigán of Slupsko. Before the interior was repainted in 2011, Gothic paintings were discovered here, probably from the 15th century⁴, showing scenes from the lives of Saint Barbara and Saint Catherine. A covered passage from 1792 links the church with the chateau.

According to legend, the church's bell had the most beautiful voice in Silesia. The Duchess of Cieszyn wanted to buy it, and the councillors asked for as many ducats as she could lay out along the road from Cieszyn to Fryštát. The duchess agreed, but overnight the bell returned. So she left it to Fryštát, on the sole condition that the tower windows facing Cieszyn be walled up. Count Nicholas Taaffe had a statue of Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, erected in the town, which makes Fryštát one of the few places in the Czech Republic with a tradition of venerating this saint⁷. Under the Taaffes the Church of Saint Mark was also built, in 1774; its tower received its onion-shaped roof during the restoration after a fire in 1823.

The chateau park and the ponds

Behind the chateau lies Božena Němcová Park, founded in 1804 as an English-style landscape park. Covering 36 hectares, it is the largest park in Karviná, and it has been a cultural monument since 1992⁸. In 1877 a hunt attended by Crown Prince Rudolf was held in its game preserve. The park has a fallow deer enclosure, a lake, an open-air cinema and the Larisch Gazebo, built from the columns of the original Larisch family tomb near the demolished Solca Chateau. The park is crossed by the Mlýnka, an artificial millrace. On it stands Janeček's Mill, now home to the Silesian Education Centre; it is not a listed monument.

In Staré Město, in the Olšiny area, lie the Lipový, Dubový and Olšový ponds. They were established by Duke Casimir II at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries and today form an important bird reserve. Nearby stands the Olšiny farmstead, built by the Taaffes in the 18th century. Today it serves as a hotel, a riding school and a restaurant. Staré Město itself, where the original settlement lay, is recorded in 1447 as Starý Fryštát, “Old Fryštát”.

Coal and the Counts Larisch

The Larisch family had held the Karviná estate since the 16th century⁹. In 1776 hard coal was discovered near Karviná¹⁰, and the first mining took the form of shallow pits. The Karvín of that time, today's Doly, was still a farming village at the beginning of the 19th century, known for sheep breeding. After 1850, however, the Larisch-Mönnich family and other owners began working deep mines, and the village grew into a mining and industrial town.

Coal made the family rich. Johann Larisch-Mönnich was Austrian Minister of Finance from 1865 to 1867. Heinrich Larisch-Mönnich was Governor of Silesia⁹. In 1873 the family's new residence in Karviná, Solca Chateau, was built, and at the beginning of the 20th century the Larisches received guests such as Emperor Franz Joseph I and the German Emperor Wilhelm II¹⁰. In 1945 the Larisch property in Czechoslovakia was nationalised⁹.

The Gabriela Mine, founded in 1854, was named after Countess Gabriela Žerotínová. It closed in 2004 and is a cultural monument. In April 1924, fifteen miners died here after a fire and an explosion¹¹. At the Barbora Mine, originally called Austria, 30 miners were killed in a methane explosion on 18 October 1990¹². The last cart of coal left Barbora in December 2002, and both headframes are still standing. Of the Jindřich Mine, only the chimney remains. At the ČSA group mine, mining ended in February 2021.

Vanished Karvinná and the Leaning Church

Mining had its dark side too. It caused the disappearance of the original mining town of Karvinná, where Doly lies today. In the 1930s the ground began to subside and houses began to crack; in the 1950s came the demolitions. Solca Chateau was pulled down in 1953¹⁰, and in 1960 the Neo-Renaissance Church of Saint Henry, which could hold 4,000 worshippers¹³. Since 2023 a cross has stood on its site, and the church's ground plan is marked out by a planted privet hedge. In the 2021 census, Doly had only 20 inhabitants¹⁴. Mining also destroyed most of Louky and Darkov.

What remains of the original Karvinná is the 18th-century Baroque Church of Saint Peter of Alcantara, known as the Leaning Church. Since 1854, 27 coal seams have been mined beneath it, and the church has tilted 6.8° to the south¹⁵. In the early 1990s it was in danger of collapse. A demolition order was even issued, but the priest in charge, Ernest Dostal, succeeded in having it revoked. In 1994–1995 the church underwent a complete renovation and structural stabilisation. The Czech Book of Records and Curiosities lists it as the most leaning church in the Czech Republic¹⁵.

Inside, a medieval stone baptismal font has survived. In 2012 the church received two new bronze bells, and the larger one is dedicated to Saint Henry in memory of the demolished church. Karin Lednická told the story of the vanished town in her novel The Leaning Church. The first volume came out in 2020, the second in 2021 and the third in 2024. As early as 2018, the Centrum cinema hosted the premiere of the documentary O zaniklé Karvinné (On Vanished Karvinná).

Darkov Spa

In 1862 Baron Georg IV Bees of Chrostina was searching for coal on his land between Darkov and Stonava. Instead, his drill struck a spring of salt water: iodine-bromine brine. Doctor Fiedler from Fryštát heated the water and bathed his patients in it in wooden tubs. In 1866 the provincial government in Opava approved the establishment of a spa named the Spa Place of Ráj¹⁶. The Viennese professor Redtenbacher found that the brine contained more iodine and bromine than the springs of Hall in Upper Austria, then the most famous of their kind¹⁶. The spa was owned or operated by the Larisch-Mönnich family.

The spa park was laid out in 1895, keeping the original vegetation and adding trees brought from the Beskids. In 1900–1901 the Social House was built in it to a design by the Viennese architect Korn, and in 1902 the Chapel of Saint Anne, built by the spa doctor Vilhelm Degré and his wife Anna Marie. The park with the Social House, the sanatorium and the chapel has been a cultural monument since 1992. Today the spa treats musculoskeletal disorders, neurological problems and patients recovering from injuries and surgery¹⁷. Government Regulation No. 262/2025 Coll. established the spa town of Karviná, which includes Darkov¹⁸.

In Darkov, the Bridge of the Heroes of Sokolovo, a reinforced concrete arch bridge built in 1922–1925 to a design by the Viennese engineer Franz Rabe, spans the Olše. Its deck hangs from two arches, and the bridge has Neo-Baroque features; it is a cultural monument. During its repair in 2003–2004 it was raised by two metres¹⁹, and since then it has served only pedestrians and cyclists. In 2014 the Czech National Bank depicted it on a gold coin in the series Bridges of the Czech Republic²⁰.

The twentieth century

After the collapse of Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland disputed the Cieszyn region. In 1920 the territory was divided, and Karviná went to Czechoslovakia. In October 1938 the area of today's Karviná was occupied by Polish troops, and after Poland's defeat in 1939 the region fell to Nazi Germany. Karviná was liberated on 3 May 1945; from 1 to 3 May there was fighting near the water tower in Hranice, which had served as an observation post during the war. The tower, built in 1930, is 39.4 metres tall²¹; it went out of service in 1972 and was converted into a residential building in 2011–2017²².

In 1946 Prime Minister Klement Gottwald launched the construction of a new town, in today's district of Nové Město, with a ceremonial groundbreaking. At the turn of 1948 and 1949, Fryštát, Karvinná, Darkov, Ráj and Staré Město merged into a single town named Karviná¹⁰. Fryštát became the centre, while the original Karvinná turned into the outlying district of Doly. Later buildings went up in the Brussels style, and the main axis became 17 November Avenue, much of which is now lined with sakura trees.

In the 1950s and 1960s housing estates grew up in Ráj and Mizerov, where roughly half of the town's population lives today¹⁴. Between 1950 and 1970 the population rose from 38,465 to 78,546²³, while Doly was being depopulated. The tram line, which had run to the square in Fryštát since 1912, was closed in the early 1960s because of mining subsidence, and in 1963 a new main railway station was opened closer to the centre.

Karviná today

Karviná has been a statutory city since 2002¹. In 1990 teaching began here at the School of Business Administration, then part of Masaryk University; since 1991 the school has belonged to the Silesian University in Opava. The town has sizeable Slovak and Polish minorities²⁴: in the 2021 census, 2,456 residents declared Polish nationality and 2,137 Slovak nationality¹⁴. The town also runs a primary school and nursery school with Polish as the language of instruction²⁵. Karviná is the birthplace of the Polish writer Gustaw Morcinek, author of works set in the mining world, and of the top model Petra Němcová.

After 2000 the Nové Pole industrial zone was established in Staré Město; companies with production halls there include Shimano, Sejong, Gates and Mölnlycke Health Care. The town's sporting pride is handball: the club HCB Karviná, founded in 1955, won seven titles in a row, from the 2003/04 to the 2009/10 season²⁶. In 1968 the town hosted the first handball match between a World Selection and the Czechoslovak national team²⁷. The footballers of MFK Karviná play at the Municipal Stadium in Ráj.