Orlová: Benedictines, coal and a new centre in Lutyně

A town on the Orlová Plateau

Orlová is a Silesian town in the Karviná District of the Moravian-Silesian Region. It lies in Cieszyn Silesia, about ten kilometres from the Polish border. In German it is called Orlau, in Polish Orłowa. It is divided into four local parts: Město, Lazy, Poruba and Lutyně. In the 2021 census, just under 21,000 people lived in Lutyně, over 5,200 in Poruba, over 1,100 in Město and 317 in Lazy². These figures alone show that the town's centre of gravity shifted during the 20th century.

The town lies at an altitude of 200 to 300 metres on the Orlová Plateau, whose ridge between Petřvald, Orlová and Karviná reaches 300 metres. Traces of glaciation have survived on the plateau: the landforms and erratic boulders bear witness to a push moraine ridge³. The backbone of the area is formed by brooks, which are known locally as stružky. All parts of the town have been marked to varying degrees by coal mining: land subsidence, spoil heaps, waste tips and sludge lagoons.

Poruba has a number of ponds, such as Kališčok, Dub, Špice and Nový rybník. Together with the ponds along the Rychvaldská Lutyňka in Lutyně, they belong to the Heřmanský stav – Odra – Poolší bird area, which protects the little bittern, the common kingfisher and the bluethroat³. Dawn redwoods protected as memorable trees grow in Lutyně and Poruba.

The eagle, salt and the Benedictines

According to legend, Duke Mieszko of Cieszyn was resting with his wife Ludmila while hunting in the local forests. A huge eagle carrying a host flew up from the bushes and dropped it above the ducal couple. The duke saw this as a sign from God, had a chapel built on the spot and named the settlement after the eagle⁴. The legend is depicted in a painting in the chancel of the Orlová church, restored in 2013⁵. How the name really came about is not known. It is most likely based on the word orel, meaning eagle, and according to linguists the village may have taken its name from a watercourse called the Orlava. An eagle also appears on the town's coat of arms, adopted in 1970⁶: it is accompanied by a deciduous tree and crossed miners' hammers, which, according to the town, recall that it was coal mining that made Orlová a town⁴.

The first written mention of Orlová dates from 1223, in a charter of Bishop Lawrence of Wrocław. The settlement then formed the core of a territory called Sal, meaning Salt, and belonged to the Benedictines of the monastery at Tyniec near Kraków⁴. In 1227, Pope Gregory IX confirmed Orlová to the Benedictines of Tyniec. By a charter of 1268, Duke Władysław I of Opole founded the monastery in Orlová, or possibly renewed its rights. Anyone who visited the church on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary enjoyed 30 days of full freedom, and the monastery thus also became a refuge for the persecuted, including criminals⁷.

At the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, the monks took part in the colonisation of the Cieszyn region: they cleared forests and founded villages. The origins of Poruba and Lazy are linked to the monastery. According to the town, the abbey's economic influence extended over the surrounding area of about 160 km²⁴. In the mid-15th century, Abbot Jan III had a masonry church built. Crowds of pilgrims headed there, and in 1473 its visitors were granted a hundred-day indulgence⁷.

In the early 1560s, Duke Wenceslaus III Adam of Cieszyn, who had converted to Protestantism and needed money, drove out the abbot and attached the monastery estates to the Fryštát estate. The monastery buildings were later dismantled; according to tradition, the material was used for buildings in Rychvald. The estate was then held by the Cikán family of Slupsko, from 1619 by the Bludowski family of Bludov, who built a chateau next to the church in 1765, and in the 19th century by the Mattencloit family.

The Silesian Hradčany

On a rise above the square in Orlová-Město stands the two-towered Neo-Gothic Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. According to the town, it is Orlová's most important monument⁴, and it is sometimes nicknamed the Silesian Hradčany⁸. It stands on the site of the chapel mentioned in the 1223 charter and of a Gothic church from the 15th century. In 1903 the old church was dismantled except for the chancel, and the new one was built to a design by Josef Berger⁹. It was completed in 1905 and consecrated in 1906. What remains of the Gothic church is the chancel, that is, the space around the main altar⁵. From the square, a Y-shaped stairway¹⁰ leads up to the church, with four statues of saints: Saint Joseph, Benedict, John of Nepomuk and Hedwig. The organ by the Krnov firm Rieger Brothers has 2,700 pipes⁵⁹. The church is a cultural monument, and services are held there in both Czech and Polish.

In the 1980s the undermined church was threatened with demolition. It was saved by the priest Antonín Huvar together with his parishioners, and other priests continued his work. The repairs took three decades and were crowned in 2013 by the restoration of the altar⁸. Behind the church lies the chateau park, laid out as a natural landscape composition. It was once the site of the Bludowski chateau, which served as the town hospital from 1902 and was demolished at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s because of undermining.

Coal, the railway and the grammar schools

In the Middle Ages, Orlová was a farming village where linen weaving was also important. Change came with coal. Mining began in the first half of the 19th century, and in 1844 the Mattencloit family granted the Rothschilds the right to mine coal. By 1850 there were already 16 coal pits in Orlová and Lazy⁴. The connection to the Košice-Bohumín Railway was of key importance. Miners' colonies grew up around the mines, such as Mühsam, popularly called Mizam, the Halfar Colony or Václavka.

The municipality grew quickly, and at the beginning of the 20th century it became a centre of both Czech and Polish education and the seat of many associations; it even had its own museum. In 1922 it was promoted to a town⁴. A narrow-gauge tram between Ostrava, Petřvald and Karviná ran through Orlová. In 1909 a Czech grammar school was founded here, and at the same time the Juliusz Słowacki Polish Real Grammar School¹¹. A total of 92 pupils started in its first year on 23 September 1909¹².

Construction of the Lazy Mine began in 1890 as the Nová jáma (New Shaft), and it was built as the largest and most modern mine of its time. Mining began there in 1892, and by the standards of the day it had a huge capacity of 500,000 tonnes of coal a year¹³. On 20 May 1919, firedamp and coal dust exploded here, killing 92 miners¹⁴. In Poruba, the Žofie Mine was established in 1871; mining there ended in 1995¹⁵. The nearby Václav Mine was founded in 1899 by the Austrian mining company Alpine, which is why it was popularly known as Alpinka. What remains of the mine is its administrative building, which is a cultural monument¹⁶.

The dispute over Cieszyn Silesia, a strike and war

After the First World War, Czechoslovakia and Poland were in dispute over Cieszyn Silesia. During the dispute, the Polish grammar school was closed from May 1920 and its building was occupied by the Czechoslovak army. When Cieszyn Silesia was divided in 1920, Orlová went to Czechoslovakia. In the cemetery stands a memorial to those who fell in the Seven-Day War over Cieszyn Silesia in 1919. During the Orlová strike of 4 April 1925, people died after police intervened. They are commemorated by a granite boulder near the square, unveiled in 1960, and by a grave bearing the inscription “Žalujeme” (We accuse) in the local cemetery¹⁷. In the 1930s Orlová was hit by the economic crisis, accompanied by social unrest and strikes.

After Munich, Orlová was annexed to Poland in 1938, and after Poland's defeat in 1939 it became part of the German Reich⁴. In 1938 the Czech schools were closed, and under the German occupation all the Polish ones. Many teachers of the Polish grammar school were arrested in 1940 and taken to concentration camps. Among them was the poet Adolf Fierla, a native of Orlová, who had studied at the grammar school and later taught there. The Red Army liberated Orlová on 1 and 2 May 1945.

The vanishing town

The negative effects of mining became fully apparent after the Second World War. Undermined buildings were already being demolished in the early 1950s, and thousands of people began to leave, mainly from Lazy¹⁸. The complete liquidation of Orlová and the resettlement of its inhabitants to neighbouring towns and villages was even considered⁴. In the end, this did not happen. Gradually, most of the old town and of the original Lazy disappeared. What remains of Lazy is mainly a street network without houses, a few isolated memorials and the mine site; in the 2021 census, 317 people lived in Lazy². In old Orlová, the burgher school building fell in 1969, followed later by Cingr House below the Lutheran church, the Workers' House, the old Czech grammar school building, the Sokol gymnasium and, in 1987, the Polish grammar school building Na Obrokách. Also demolished was a department store with a kiosk, which had housed a mine gas vent known as the “eternal flame”¹⁹.

Because of undermining, the tram lines were gradually closed, and in 1963 express trains moved to a new realigned line via Dětmarovice. Passenger trains stopped calling at Orlová in 1967, and the station building was demolished. In 2012, the newspaper Karvinský deník reported that Orlová was the only town in Czechia with more than 10,000 inhabitants without a rail connection, and that the remaining tracks served freight traffic²⁰. Mine gas still escapes beneath old Orlová today, and methane vents stand in many places. The Lazy Mine continued mining until November 2019. Since 1892, 145.4 million tonnes of coal had been extracted from it¹³. On 27 July 2024, the mine's concrete headframe, about 83 metres tall, was brought down with explosives. At the request of heritage conservationists, the steel trestle headframe of shaft No. 2 is to remain on the site²¹.

A new town in Lutyně

Hope came from geological boreholes drilled in 1957 and 1958 near the neighbouring village of Horní Lutyně. They were not looking for coal, but, on the contrary, for a place where there was none and where it was possible to build²². The 1958 zoning plan was the first to envisage moving the town to the territory of Horní Lutyně, which was not threatened by undermining²³. The village was formerly called Polská Lutyně and was joined to Orlová in 1960; Lazy and Poruba had belonged to the town since 1946.

Construction of the housing estate began in 1963. It was built district by district, and these districts are still called stages today. In the first of them, along Masaryk Avenue, about five thousand people found homes²⁴, and further stages were added until the end of the 1980s. The town's population rose from 24,268 in 1970⁶ to 36,399 in the 1991 census²⁵. According to the town, schools and shops were built with a delay behind the flats.

Even earlier, a miners' housing estate of so-called Finnish houses had grown up in Poruba, some of which have survived. In the mid-1990s, Masaryk Avenue was given a green central strip and small roundabouts. The idea came from partners in Illnau-Effretikon in Switzerland²⁶. In 2003 a multi-storey car park with sports grounds on the roof was added in stage V, designed in cooperation with architecture students from Winterthur²⁷. In the middle of the housing estate stands the Chapel of Saint John of Nepomuk, which already belonged to the old village of Lutyně, and Mass is still celebrated in it today.

What remains of old Orlová

After 1989 the approach to old Orlová changed. A revitalisation began, aimed at saving the surviving buildings, and the town hall from 1928 was also saved from planned demolition⁴. It was built in 1927–1928 on the site of the old town hall by the firm of the builder František Trubka²⁸. After reconstruction it reopened in 1995, and it also serves as a ceremonial hall. The core of Orlová-Město, about 60 houses, is protected by a heritage protection zone²⁹. They include the Hus House, the building of the former town savings bank and the former school of the Borromean Sisters, popularly known as the “klášter” (monastery), although it was never a medieval monastery. The Zapomenutá Orlová (Forgotten Orlová) educational trail leads through old Orlová; it opened in April 2021 with 12 information boards. It was created as a student project from the participatory budget³⁰, and in 2025 four more stops were added³¹.

On Cingr Hill stands a late Neoclassical Lutheran church. Its foundation stone was laid on 24 June 1861, and it was consecrated on 15 October 1862³². The imperial patent of the same year granting Protestants equal rights was placed in the foundations beneath the tower. Because of undermining, the church had already been structurally secured in 1982³³. In 2004, on the basis of a decision by the building authority, the congregation had to stop using the church, and even its demolition was considered. In 2005 it underwent another general overhaul³², and the Lutherans returned to it. The Lutheran cemetery next to the church, where the last burials took place in 1930, disappeared because of undermining, and in 2012 a memorial was created on its site.

Schools, sport and famous natives

The Czech grammar school moved many times. Since 2 September 1996 it has been housed in a new building in the centre of Lutyně, which won the Building of the Year competition and received the Grand Prix award³⁴. Its shape refers to the Roman Colosseum. Former students include the sexologist Radim Uzel and the television presenter Iva Kubanková. The Polish grammar school moved from Orlová to Karviná¹¹. Lutyně today has a primary school and nursery school with Polish as the language of instruction, as well as an exhibition hall of the Muzeum Těšínska (Museum of the Cieszyn Region).

Cultural life is provided by the Orlová Town House of Culture with Kino O. Events held here include the Orlová Town Days, and the town also organises the international women's cycling race Gracia Orlová⁴. Ice hockey has been played in Orlová since 1930³⁵. Today's MHK Slovan Orlová plays at the ice stadium in the Na Stuchlíkovci sports complex in Lutyně, which also has football pitches, tennis courts and a volleyball area³⁶.

The sculptor Stanislav Kolíbal was born in Orlová in 1925. In 2019 he represented Czechia at the major international art exhibition in Venice, which is held every two years³⁷. Other natives include the violinist and conductor Bohdan Warchal, founder of the Slovak Chamber Orchestra, and the sound engineer Otokar Balcy. The Polish writers Gustaw Przeczek and Karol Piegza were born in Lazy. Petr Bezruč wrote the poem “Lazy” about the local mayor Křístek, who got a Czech school established in Lazy.