Dolní Vítkovice
Dolní oblast Vítkovice
Interesting facts
- Locals nicknamed the complex of mine, coking plant and blast furnaces 'Ostrava's Hradčany', comparing it to the castle district of Prague.
- Over its working life the site ran six blast furnaces, shut down one by one until the final tapping in 1998.
- The first furnace on the site of Blast Furnace No. 1 was a Scottish-type furnace lit in 1871, which worked with interruptions until 1902.
- After an overhaul in 1988, Blast Furnace No. 1 ranked among Europe's most modern and could produce up to 300,000 tonnes of special and foundry iron a year.
- Visitors now ride up the furnace in its old four-tonne skip hoist, which once carried the charge of ore and coke to the top.
- The gasholder that became the Gong hall was built in just fourteen months in 1922–24 and stored 50,000 cubic metres of cleaned blast-furnace gas.
- To fit the concert hall inside, the gasholder's steel bell was jacked up by almost 15 metres over ten days in January 2011.
- The power station now housing the U6 exhibition held two gas-driven blowers that pushed air preheated to about 1,200 °C into the furnace.
- An inclined hoist driven by a steam engine was added to Blast Furnace No. 1 in 1910–1911 to haul its charge to the top.
Why it is worth it
Dolní Vítkovice — Lower Vítkovice — is the heart of the ironworks that made Ostrava the steel city of Central Europe, preserved after the fires went out rather than cleared away. Its story begins in 1828, when Archduke Rudolf, Archbishop of Olomouc, set in motion an iron smelter here; "Rudolf's works" began operating in 1830, a coke plant followed in 1831, and the first blast furnace fired with coke was lit in 1836, with a second in 1838. In 1852 the Hlubina coal mine was sunk next to the works, so that coal, coke and iron were produced side by side in one compact site — a closed production cycle whose parts all survive.
The last tapping of iron took place on 27 September 1998. Four years later, in June 2002, the Czech government declared the area a national cultural monument, and in December 2008 it became one of the first Czech sites on the list of European cultural heritage; it has also been on the country's tentative list for UNESCO since 2001. What makes the place remarkable to walk through is its density: blast furnaces with their tangle of gas pipes and skip hoists, red-brick halls, the coking batteries and the mine headframe all stand within a few hundred metres of one another, with the city just beyond.
Instead of being frozen as ruins, the buildings were given new work. Blast furnace No. 1 carries the Bolt Tower, a glass and steel superstructure designed by Josef Pleskot and completed in 2015, which brings the whole structure to 77.7 metres and holds a viewing deck, bar and café with views across Ostrava to the Beskydy mountains. A former gasholder was turned by the same architect into Gong, a multi-purpose hall for some 1,500 people opened in 2012, and the old power centre houses the U6 science and technology exhibition. Every July the steel skeleton and brick halls become the backdrop of the Colours of Ostrava music festival.
Getting there
The complex lies in Ostrava itself, about 1.6 km from the city centre. Leoš Janáček Airport Ostrava (OSR) is about 18 km away in a straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Lower Vítkovice (Czech: Dolní oblast Vítkovice) is a national site of industrial heritage located in the Vítkovice district of Ostrava in the Czech Republic. It includes an extensive industrial area Vítkovice ironworks with a unique collection of industrial architecture. A set of three successive parts - coal mine, coke ovens and blast furnace operations - also called Ostravian Hradčany, after Hradčany, the Castle District of Prague. The area is registered in the list of European cultural heritage, and was placed on the Czech Republic's list of tentative UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2001 under the name The Industrial Complexes at Ostrava.
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