To spot St Thomas’s Abbey, look for a tall, gothic-style church of reddish brick and pale stone, with huge pointed windows and a green, onion-shaped spire rising from its dark roof.
Let’s step back through the centuries for a moment-the air is filled with a soft hum as the wind plays with the old branches in front of you. In 1346, Augustinian monks arrived in Brno, and soon, the steady sound of chisels and hammers echoed through the streets as John Henry of Luxemburg, the Margrave of Moravia, kicked off the construction of their new cloister. That original abbey was quite fancy, so much so that in the 1780s, Emperor Joseph II basically kicked the monks out for a government office-talk about an eviction notice!
But monks are nothing if not resourceful. Off they went to suburban Staré Brno, where they set up home in this very building in front of you. If you close your eyes for a second, you might almost hear the echoes of music drifting from inside-the abbey had a long tradition of musical study, and you can imagine students practicing notes, the melodies swirling around the gothic arches.
Now, let’s talk about the real pea-souper of a story here: Gregor Mendel. In the garden out back, Mendel quietly worked with his pea plants, probably muttering to himself about wrinkled versus smooth seeds. If you listen hard enough, maybe you’ll hear the rustle of pea pods and the scribble of notes. Who would guess, from these simple experiments, that Mendel’s work would change science forever? His laws of inheritance are now in every biology textbook, but in his time, Mendel was just the abbey’s patient abbot, working away as bees buzzed among the flower beds.
Today, you can visit Mendel’s Museum right here, or even stroll through the very gardens where he made history with something as humble as a pea plant. So next time you have peas on your dinner plate, remember, you’re just a bite away from the birth of genetics!
