← Landmarks and places of interest: Rychvald
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Rychvald: the Barský chateau, the Church of Saint Anne and Skučák Pond
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Rychvald lies in historical Cieszyn Silesia, right on the north-eastern edge of Ostrava, and on all sides it borders other towns: Bohumín, Orlová, Petřvald and Ostrava. Just under eight thousand people live here1. It has been a town since 1985, but its history goes back to around 1305, when it first appears in a register of tithes of the Bishopric of Wrocław2.
The Renaissance chateau and the Church of Saint Anne, according to the town the two oldest buildings in Rychvald, were built at the end of the 16th century for Bernard Barský of Baště. In the 19th century, as coal mining developed in the surrounding area, the farming village turned into a mining community, and in the 20th century coal was mined beneath its land as well. At the same time, a great many ponds were created within the town's territory. One of them, Skučák, is a nature reserve.
A town between Ostrava and Orlová
Rychvald belongs to the Karviná District in the Moravian-Silesian Region. It lies in the Ostrava Basin, in the Ostrava-Karviná coalfield, and its built-up area has grown together with Michálkovice, a district of Ostrava. To the north it borders Bohumín, to the east Orlová, to the south Petřvald and to the west Ostrava. The town covers about 17 km² and lies a little over 200 metres above sea level2. It consists of a single cadastral area, but locals distinguish a number of neighbourhoods, such as Horní and Dolní Podlesí, Jarošovice, Fojtství, Návsí, Kympy, Zbytky and Starý dvůr.
The name Starý dvůr (Old Manor Farm) belongs to the western part of the town. According to the town's website, about 800 metres north-west of today's chateau there stood a manor farm, which maps from 1876–1878 mark as “Alt Hof”; it may have been the seat of earlier owners of the estate2. Several streams flow through the area; in the past they made it possible to build ponds, and a great many of them were created here2.
In German the town is called Reichwaldau, in Polish Rychwałd. The oldest recorded form of the name is Richinwalde. The name is of German origin and is interpreted as “by the rich forest”. From the 15th century the form Rycholtov was used in Czech, and in the local dialect people said “rychfołt”. The coat of arms and the flag were granted to the town by the Chair of the Czech National Council on 7 May 1992. The shield is divided horizontally into silver and blue; in the upper half three blue linden leaves grow from the dividing line, and in the lower half there is a silver bar3.
From episcopal tithes to the Barský family of Baště
Rychvald is first mentioned around 1305 in a register of tithes, the dues that villages paid to the Bishopric of Wrocław. At that time the village had about forty hides (lány) of land. The exact year of its founding is not known; according to the town, it was most likely founded at the end of the 13th century2. This probably happened during the settlement led by the Benedictine monastery in nearby Orlová. From the very beginning Rychvald belonged to the Duchy of Cieszyn, which in 1327 became a fief of King John of Luxembourg of Bohemia. After the death of the last Piast of Cieszyn in 1625, the duchy passed directly to the Habsburgs, who held it until 19182.
In 1447 the local parish is recorded in the register of Peter's Pence among the parishes of the Cieszyn deanery. The original wooden church was destroyed by a great fire in 1535. Rychvald was part of the property of the Orlová monastery, and after the monastery was dissolved, Duke Wenceslaus III Adam of Cieszyn attached it to the Fryštát estate. The duchy, however, fell into debt, and the duke had to sell the part of the estate that included Rychvald. In 1573 it was bought by Burian Barský of Baště.
His son Bernard Barský of Baště chose Rychvald as his seat and between 1575 and 1577 built a large Renaissance chateau here4. He was a Protestant, and at the end of the 16th century he also had a brick church built, today's Church of Saint Anne. The Barský family held Rychvald until 16305. After them the estate passed in turn to the Tluk family of Tošanovice, the Haugwitz family of Biskupice, the Vrbna family, the Freudenthal family and the Gašín family of Rosenberg. The Battle of White Mountain was followed by re-Catholicisation, and the local parish became Catholic in 1668.
Starý dvůr Chateau and its owners
The chateau stands in the western part of the town, and locals also call it Starý dvůr. According to the town, it is the oldest surviving building in Rychvald. It is a four-winged, two-storey chateau which, according to the town, measures 60 × 80 metres on the outside, with a courtyard of 48 × 48 metres2. The north and east wings were residential; the south and west wings housed granaries and stables. The stone portal of the main entrance is decorated with the coats of arms of Bernard Barský of Baště and his third wife, Anna Sobišovská of Šinovice2. According to tradition, stone from the demolished Benedictine monastery in Orlová was used to build it. From the days of serfdom, the town's website records a punishment bench known as “na bardoňu”; it supposedly got its name from the man who was the first to try it out.
In the mid-18th century the indebted Gašín family sold Rychvald to Baron Jan Václav Mönnich. His daughter and heiress Anna Marie Tekla married Count Jan Josef Larisch in 17916, and so the Larisch-Mönnich family came into being, which went on to develop coal mining and industry in the Karviná region. In 1869 a stop on the Košice-Bohumín Railway was opened in front of the chateau5. In the second half of the 19th century Evžen (Eugen) Larisch-Mönnich and his daughter Franziska carried out alterations to the chateau. In 1898 Franziska married Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, later a prince, and brought him the chateau as her dowry. The Starhembergs held the chateau and the estate until the end of the Second World War; according to the town's website, the last owner left before Christmas 19442.
After the war the chateau was taken over by the National Property Administration, which in 1950 handed it over to the Rychvald collective farm (JZD); the farm turned it into storerooms, flats and a farmyard. From 1962 to 1989 it belonged to the Rekultivace plant of the OKD company and fell into serious disrepair5. It has been a cultural monument since 19584. By 1988 its demolition was already being considered2. Even in the 1990s, when several owners came and went, its condition did not improve. In 2009 the chateau was bought by Pavel Šmíra, who between 2010 and 2016 had it completely reconstructed together with the adjoining grounds5. The chateau is privately owned and has never belonged to the town2. At the first Easter fair held at the chateau in 2025, many people were able to look around it for the first time since the reconstruction7.
The Church of Saint Anne
According to the town, the Church of Saint Anne is the second-oldest building in Rychvald. Bernard Barský of Baště had it built as a Protestant church in 1595–15962, on a different site from where the wooden church destroyed by fire had stood. The builder was probably Bernard Leo of Locarno, one of the so-called Welsch builders, that is, Italian-speaking builders. According to the town, his tombstone from 1603 is in the Church of Saint Wenceslas in Ostrava2. For the church, too, tradition says that material from the demolished Orlová monastery was used to build it.
It is a single-nave church with a polygonal apse and a four-sided tower on the west front. The heritage catalogue of the National Heritage Institute regards it as evidence of how Gothic forms lingered on in the region's architecture until the end of the 16th century8. The church has a Gothic rib vault, and its windows end in pointed arches with simple trefoil tracery. The keystones of the vault bear the year 1596, the monogram B. B. Z. B. and the coat of arms of Bernard Barský. Above the side entrance there is a stone lintel with the same relief as above the entrance to the chateau2.
After the Thirty Years' War the church was damaged and stood unused for a long time. In 1759 it was consecrated by Bishop Philipp Gotthard Schaffgotsch. The original bells were requisitioned for war purposes during the First World War. The new bells from the inter-war period, whose patroness was Franziska Starhemberg, met the same fate in the Second World War2. Today the church has one bell in the tower and a death knell bell. The area around the church served as a cemetery until 19082. Inside stands a Neo-Gothic altar from 1895, and in 2012 the church underwent a major repair. Below the church stands a memorial to those who fell in the First World War, which the town wanted to restore to its original appearance in 20259.
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Coal transforms the village
Until the 19th century Rychvald was a farming village. According to the town, it was only the spread of coal mining in the surrounding area that changed the make-up of its population2, and the village gradually turned into a mining community. The population grew rapidly: in 1869 there were 2,277 inhabitants, and in 1910 already 6,16310. The later opera singer Přemysl Kočí also came from a mining family; his father was a miner11. Around the turn of the century Czech associations were founded in the village, and in 1905 a Sokol branch was established12.
Since the late 1860s the line of the former Košice-Bohumín Railway has run through the village2. From 1921 the stop by the chateau bore the Czech name Rychvald zámek. Passenger trains stopped running here in the 1960s, and today the line carries only freight. From the early 1990s a track from the Heřmanice mine joined the old line near the former stop, and coal trains ran along it.
In the 20th century coal was also mined directly beneath Rychvald. Its land formed part of the mining field of the mine in neighbouring Heřmanice. As early as 1951, work began in the Rychvald part of the field on sinking the Stalin 4 upcast ventilation shaft, which from 1962 was part of the newly established Rychvald branch plant13. The shafts were built for a large plant where more than 1,500 miners were to go down every day. After the cutbacks at the end of the 1960s, however, a large part of the buildings went to the Autopal company, and the shafts remained merely auxiliary facilities through which no people went down14. Coal from the Rychvald part of the field was brought to the surface in Heřmanice. Mining ended on 30 June 199313.
Between the wars and under occupation
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After the collapse of Austria-Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia disputed the Cieszyn region. In the first, provisional division in 1918, Rychvald came under Polish administration; in the final division in 1920 it went to Czechoslovakia2. Between 1924 and 1925 the Czechoslovak Hussite Church built its own church here, with a massive polygonal tower2. When the population exceeded seven thousand, the municipality applied to be raised to a market town, that is, a small town. The request was granted that same year, in 19352.
After Munich, on 11 October 1938, Rychvald was occupied by the Polish army. Czech schools were closed, Czech associations dissolved and the Hussite church shut; on 15 August 1939 Bishop Adamski consecrated it as a Catholic church2. On 1 September 1939, the day the Second World War broke out, the municipality was occupied by the German army and Rychvald was annexed to the German Reich. Local Jewish families perished in concentration camps. A resistance group led by Rudolf Peschel operated in the municipality; the Gestapo uncovered it in October 1944. According to the town's figures, the Nazis executed seventeen local citizens for resistance activities2. Rychvald was liberated on 1 May 1945, and the Hussite congregation then returned to its church.
The memorial by the town hall commemorates those who died in 1939–1945. It bears the names of the victims and also remembers seven Jewish families, two soldiers who fell at Dunkirk and two Red Army soldiers15. Among the names is the teacher Bohuslav Kučera, a native of Rychvald, who supported the partisans in the Beskids and was executed at the end of 1944. Next to it is a memorial plaque to members of the resistance abroad in Great Britain, the brothers Josef and Fridolín Gemrot and Bedřich Bogumský15. Fridolín Gemrot flew as a radar operator with No. 68 Night Fighter Squadron RAF, and Bogumský as an air gunner with No. 311 Czechoslovak Bomber Squadron.
Skučák and other ponds
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According to the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic, Skučák is among the oldest evidence of pond farming in the Karviná region16. Ponds in the area began to develop rapidly at the end of the 15th century, and it is then that the name Skučák appears among them16. According to the mayor, the people of Rychvald have always called it Škuťok17. Since 1969 it has been a nature reserve covering about 30 hectares18. It protects the pond ecosystem with the adjoining wetlands, as well as a nesting site and a gathering place for waterbirds on migration. The Western marsh harrier and the water rail nest in the dense reeds, and great crested grebes and various species of ducks can be seen on the water18.
When the reserve was declared, the water surface was covered by the protected fringed water lily, a rare aquatic plant18. From about the 1970s, however, intensive fish farming, supplementary feeding, fertilising and liming made the aquatic plants disappear, and from 1984 the fringed water lily no longer flowered on the pond. The Nature Conservation Agency therefore had the pond desilted. More than 48,000 m³ of soil was removed from the reserve; the remaining sediment was used to create four islands and, in the reed beds, a network of irregular lagoons. The work was completed in April 2005, and gulls and lapwings began nesting on the new islands straight away. Thousands of fringed water lily seedlings sprouted from seeds that had survived in the mud, and that same summer, in July, the first plants were in flower16. The Moravian-Silesian Region's 2022 web page about the reserve, however, lists the fringed water lily among the species that have disappeared from the pond and names its return as a conservation goal18.
Rychvald has more ponds. On the western edge of the town, near the chateau, lie Velký and Malý Cihelňák, and south-west of Skučák lies Podkostelní Pond. According to the town, Nový stav pond once covered 60 hectares. It shrank because of mining subsidence and partial filling with spoil during the construction of a ventilation shaft of the Heřmanice mine, and today it is fished by anglers2. Together with Heřmanický Pond, Lesník, Figura and Záblatský Pond, it forms the Heřmanický rybník Site of European Importance13. On a meadow not far from Skučák grows a protected English oak known as the Rychvald Oak. By the school on the housing estate lies a glacial erratic boulder, which was found during sand extraction and, according to the town, weighs several tonnes2.
Rychvald today
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Rychvald has been a town since 19852. Between 1963 and 1968 a housing estate grew up in the centre, with a primary school, a nursery school, a health centre, a pharmacy, a cultural centre with a library and a shopping centre. According to the town, this created a small square, which Rychvald had not had until then12; it is called Peace Square (Náměstí Míru). After 1990 almost the whole municipality was connected to the gas supply, and a new wastewater treatment plant, a sheltered housing block and a roundabout in the centre were built. According to the town, the only building left from the old village is house No. 39, built in 1821 as a school, which housed the municipal office until 19382. Since the beginning of the century Rychvald has gained about a thousand inhabitants19.
The old traditions include the parish fair at the beginning of July with a commemorative bonfire2; the procession sets out from the Hussite church20. The Hussite church, whose nave is decorated with paintings by the academic painters Hanuš from 1932 and Obšil from 1957, hosts Advent concerts as well as concerts of the Saint Wenceslas Music Festival. Newer traditions are the Fish Festival, Christmas markets and a living nativity scene. The town is home to the sports clubs TJ Sokol, TJ Slavoj and TJ Baník and to a chess club, which organises the Rychvald Chess Summer2.
Rychvald is the birthplace of the opera singer Přemysl Kočí. From 1949 to 1967 he was a soloist of the National Theatre Opera, and from the 1969/1970 season until the end of 1978 he was the theatre's director11. The composer, conductor and choirmaster Karel Kupka was also born here21. According to the town, the pastor of the Hussite congregation is Jana Šilerová, who in 1999 became a bishop of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church2.
