10/07/2025
Sometimes things don’t go according to a plan, but - that might give you a chance discover something unexpected and really incredible.
Courtesy of the British public transport being a nuisance as usual, we ended up staying overnight in Ostrava in the Czech Republic, instead of going straight to Poland. Despite having been born about 40km from that city, I never really paid much attention to it - yes, I visited the Zoo and caught many trains and buses from there, but… have always considered the city just… not pretty enough to visit. Turns out, it is very pretty (if that’s the right word, I’m not sure) in its own, specific way. Our hotel was in the industrial part of town (actually, the whole city is very industrial, with a brutalist, post-Communism feel) and we’d discovered a real gem next to it - historic ironworks and steelworks (now fully functional as a museum) - a really fascinating place, in a slightly spooky way.
I’ve done some industrial tourism in the past and find such places really captivating, and I wish we had more time to explore it fully.
‘Ostrava is known as the Steel City or the Steel Heart of the Czech Republic, mainly thanks to the Vítkovice Ironworks, which was founded in 1828 in a part of Ostrava called Vítkovice. This created a unique complex of heavy industrial production, from coal mining to a processing plant, to iron production.
Vítkovice Ironworks has been famous in Europe since its beginning for its quality production of railway rails. Did you know that to this day, the whole of Central Europe still uses railway lines made from Ostrava iron? But what brought them to the top also nearly brought them to the bottom. By the 1870s, most of the important lines had been completed, orders were dwindling and the ironworks management was weak – everything was heading for bankruptcy. Fortunately, there was a saviour, a hero: a young Viennese manager called Paul Kupelwieser with a lot of experience from England, Germany and ... Belgium! He brought modern steel production to Ostrava – in time new blast furnaces of the so-called Belgian type were built, and a new glorious era began for Vítkovice Ironworks.
As the new manager, Paul Kupelwieser turned Vítkovice into one of the largest steelworks in Europe. Under his leadership, production was reoriented towards arms orders. The armour plates produced in the Vítkovice Ironworks had success in comparative shooting tests and the plant became the exclusive supplier of armour plates for the Austro-Hungarian fleet’.
Nowadays it is a fully functional museum, with many guided walks on offer. The grounds of that industrial monument also serve as a stage for many concerts and festivals, including the biggest outdoor festival in the Czech Republic - Colours of Ostrava. To be honest, I couldn’t imagine a better place for a rock concert - it’s already so atmospheric even without any music.
Following our short tour of that fascinating place, we ended up having a traditional Czech meal (we can never resist that caloric bomb) - deep fried cheese (smažaček) with fries (hranolky) and tartare sauce - a diet might be needed soon 😂😂
