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Olomouc was the most important city in Moravia until the Swedes occupied it for eight years during the Thirty Years' War, leaving in 1650 and taking the regional capital title with them to Brno. What they left behind was a city preserved almost by accident, the administrative rebuilding never quite catching up, the baroque monuments standing intact because there was no money to tear them down and start over. The Holy Trinity Column, completed in 1754 after 38 years of construction, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site: a towering baroque candle flame of gilded figures rising from the upper square.

Six baroque fountains scatter through the old town, each depicting a different ancient figure - Jupiter, Mercury, Triton, Neptune, Hercules, Julius Caesar.

They survived because the city council kept them as fire reserves rather than fashionable decoration, which meant no one had justification to remove them. The Palacky University, founded in 1573, gives Olomouc the highest density of university students per capita in Central Europe, which fills the old town's bars and coffeehouses with exactly the energy you would hope for.