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Jihlava

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Town Square

In the middle of a wide hilly region, rich on forests and lakes, known as Bohemian-Moravian Highlands, lies an ancient town called Jihlava, the oldest of among Bohemian mining towns (550 meters above sea level, 88 sq. km, 53,000 inhabitants). Towards the end of the 12th century, according to historic sources, a Slavic settlement dominated by St. John-the-Baptist church was founded on the hills over the Jihlava River. The village was to become a starting point for the colonizers of the region. Their colonizing endeavors picked up extraordinary speed at the break of the 13th century, as silver lodes were found underground. The ensuing silver fever brought miners, tradesmen, and merchants from all over Europe. The small village could no longer accommodate so many settlers or their needs, so a new town was founded on the opposite river shore. The generous layout of the new town testifies of the community's great wealth, evidently accountable to mining activities.

Holy Mother's Gate

The ground plan of the new town, designed as a network of right-angle perpendicular streets with a large town square in the middle, was the result of mandatory directives for town planning which came into force in 1270, during the reign of King Přemysl Otakar II. The town's prosperity was ensured by a set of royal privileges which enabled Jihlava to become one of the most powerful towns in the Bohemian Kingdom. Massive walls protected the town and stone houses with pillared arcades enclosed the town square. The town had a license to die-stamp coins. For a long time, Jihlava enjoyed a prominent position in the sphere of judicial law: for the first time in Central Europe, the town codified its own mining laws, in addition to municipal laws. Jihlava's mining code served as an example for several of other mining towns. For many centuries thereafter, the seat of the Supreme Mining Board was in Jihlava. The importance of silver mining declined towards the end of the 14th century: for one, the richest lodes of pure silver had been exploited, and, for the other, an earthquake and subsequent flooding devastated the mines. However, by then, well-developed commerce and trades ensured the town's economic prosperity - especially textile production that was to become the town's major industry for three centuries.

St. Jacob the Greater
Church

In 1523, a major fire put an end to the medieval appearance of Jihlava - the town was rebuilt in the Renaissance style. The town suffered a major devastation under Swedish occupation during the Thirty Years' War. The peripheries were burned down, most burgher houses demolished, and the number of inhabitants shrank to a mere one-eighth of the original population. It took Jihlava over 100 years to repair the damages and reach a new phase of material and cultural wealth. The town was rebuilt again, this time in the Baroque style. The subsequent era was distinct for the development of textile industry. The Empress Maria Teresia invited drapers from the Netherlands, whose experience and skills helped improve the textile production in Jihlava. The textile manufactures provided a living to thousands of workers in the town and its surroundings. During the second half of the 18th century, Jihlava had the largest textile production in the Monarchy. By then, Jihlava had begun to take on a new face, again: outgrowing the constriction of its own walls, it started to expand beyond them; street lights were installed around the town square; and the Municipal Hall was rebuilt. At the beginning of the 19th century, the town's narrow gateways were torn down and the facades of houses rebuilt in the Classicism style. The Jihlava of today is an important administrative, commercial, industrial, and cultural center for the territory situated in the Northwest part of Southern Moravia. Upon the enactment of the amended constitutional law on independent organizational territories, already approved, Jihlava is to become the capital of the future region.

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