Once a major religious centre, the city is dotted with huge cathedrals and seminaries from which art treasures up to 800 years old have been collected for safe-keeping and displayed at the magnificent Archdiocesan Museum located in what was the early 12th century Premysl Palace in Vaclavske Square. The senior religious officials of old weren’t your usual modest suburban clerics; rather, they were affluent, powerful men, well-connected to the country’s royalty and no doubt with a well-developed sense of their own importance. That much is clear from the painting hung in the museum depicting the celebratory arrival of Cardinal Ferdinand Julius Troyer von Troyerstein in Olomouc in 1783. In the picture below, Cardinal Troyer is the man in the ostentatious gold coach passing Holy Trinity Column and headed towards the Town Hall. Troyer’s Coach itself has been beautifully preserved and is displayed in the museum too.
We spent two days wandering around the attractive streets and winding alleyways leading off the town square, stopping here and there for a few minutes to listen to a few of the good street musicians. On the first day we stood with umbrellas in the drizzle awaiting the performance of the small figures that emerge hourly from the Town Hall’s astronomical clock. Later we poked our noses into a few of the cathedrals but tarried longer in St Moritz Cathedral to listen to an organ recital that by chance was underway as we walked past. It was a big, powerful organ that’s used every September for an International Organ Festival and the organist was really putting it through its paces; only the audience’s gripping of the pews prevented the organ, and cathedral, from taking off.
In September 1767, eleven year old child prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was brought to Olomouc by his parents hoping to avoid the smallpox epidemic in Vienna. But the journey was in vain: Mozart had already caught the potentially fatal infection and became seriously ill in Olomouc. Hearing about it, Dean Leopold Podstatsky insisted that the Mozart family check out of the smoky Black Eagle Inn where they were staying and move into his own, much more upmarket residence. The young Mozart was treated by the Bishop’s personal physician and after several weeks made a full recovery. Part of that residence is now a restaurant, Hanacka Hospoda, with a reputation for its excellent Moravian meals. We had dinner there on Friday, our last night in wonderful Olomouc.
By the way, although recuperating from a near-fatal dose of smallpox, 11 year old Mozart found the energy and motivation to make up a tune while he was laid up in Olomouc. Mozart’s 6th Symphony!!! Does the kid irritate you a bit too?
 |  |
 |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |
