The story of this place
Erected between 1716 and 1754 in gratitude for the ending of a plague, the Holy Trinity Column dominates Olomouc's Upper Square as the largest single baroque sculptural monument in Central Europe, rising 35 metres and crowned by a gilded Holy Trinity. Its designer, the local craftsman Václav Render, was so devoted that he bequeathed his fortune to see it finished. Uniquely, the base is hollow, holding a small chapel where townsfolk could pray. When Prussian forces bombarded Olomouc in 1758 and a cannonball struck the column, the besieged citizens begged them to spare it. UNESCO inscribed the column as a World Heritage Site in 2000, a supreme flowering of Central European baroque.