Communist Era & Folk Revivalism

1918 - 1948

The Czechoslovak First Republic and European interwar modernism brought radical architectural and social transformation to Moravia, alongside the last flourishing and then destruction of its Jewish communities. Villa Tugendhat in Brno (Mies van der Rohe, 1929–30, UNESCO 2001) became an icon of the International Style — built for the Jewish Tugendhat family, who fled in 1938, a material reminder that modernism and minority existence were intertwined. In Zlín, Tomáš Baťa's company built the only consistently functionalist city in Europe: standardized red-brick factory buildings, worker housing, and urban infrastructure designed by František Lydie Gahura. The Strážnice International Folklore Festival was founded in 1946, institutionalizing ethnographic traditions that had been documented since the national awakening. Jewish Moravia experienced both its final cultural flowering and its annihilation: Třebíč's Jewish Quarter and St. Procopius Basilica (UNESCO 2003) preserve the coexistence of Jewish and Christian cultures from the Middle Ages to the 20th century — but the community that created it was murdered in the Holocaust. The 1945 expulsion of German-speaking Moravians severed the multilingual urban fabric of cities like Brno, Jihlava, and Olomouc, ending centuries of German-language festival and guild traditions.

From 1989

Post-industrial transformation and UNESCO-recognized living heritage define the Moravia-Silesia you can experience today. The Velvet Revolution of 1989 reopened religious practice and cultural expression: Velehrad received Pope John Paul II in 1990, and Dny lidí dobré vůle (Days of People of Good Will) now draws tens of thousands annually to the July 5 Cyril–Methodius celebration. Dolní Vítkovice — the former heart of Ostrava's steel industry — was reborn as a cultural and educational center, its blast furnaces and gas holder repurposed for concerts, exhibitions, and conferences. Three UNESCO intangible heritage inscriptions anchored Moravian traditions on the world stage: Slovácko Verbuňk (2005/2008, six regional types of improvised recruit dance), Ride of the Kings (2011, Pentecost horse procession in Vlčnov and four other villages), and Blaudruck/Modrotisk (2018, multi-country blueprint resist-dyeing with the Strážnice workshop as a key practitioner). The Valašské muzeum v přírodě in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm — the largest open-air museum in the Czech Republic — preserves Wallachian pastoral traditions distinct from Slovácko's wine-growing folklore. The Museum of Romani Culture in Brno (founded 1991, unique in Europe) documents Romani musical traditions that underpin regional folk styles but remain under-acknowledged by mainstream circuits. Autumn wine festivals anchored by the burčák (partially fermented young wine) season and spring Hody feasts timed by the patron saint's name day still structure the living calendar of South Moravian villages.

1848 - 1918

Industrialization and Czech national awakening transformed Moravia from a rural marchland into an industrial powerhouse with an emerging civil society. The Ostrava coal-and-steel basin grew into one of Europe's largest metallurgical centers; the Vítkovice ironworks (founded 1828) would define the region's skyline for two centuries. In Zlín, Tomáš Baťa's shoe empire began creating a company town from the 1890s onward that would later reshape the entire city in functionalist form. The Czech National Revival reached Moravia: the Moravian Museum in Brno (founded 1817) became a center of ethnographic documentation of Slovácko and Wallachian folk traditions, while the emerging Moravian identity debate sharpened — were Moravians a distinct nation or a branch of the Czech people? The question remains dynamic today. South Moravian wine culture formalized its harvest festivals around the burčák season, and the foundations of ethnographic societies that would later create the Strážnice folklore festival were laid in this period. Opava's Silesian Museum expanded its ethnographic collections to document Czech, German, and Polish communities in the borderland.

1780 - 1848

Enlightened absolutism under Joseph II and his successors reordered Moravia's institutional landscape while noble estates reshaped the countryside into a designed panorama. Josephinist reforms dissolved monasteries (including the Cistercian house at Velehrad in 1784), yet suppressed pilgrimage sites survived through popular devotion — a key continuity mechanism. The Liechtenstein family transformed their South Moravian domains into the Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape (UNESCO 1996) — an unprecedented 200 km² composition of Neoclassical, Neo-Gothic, and landscape-garden monuments that still defines the region's southern horizon. The 1805 Battle of Austerlitz at Slavkov u Brna demonstrated how Moravia's strategic position on the Vienna–Brno corridor made it a theater of European power. In wine-growing villages, the búdy (wine cellars) of places like Petrov-Plže continued their autonomous social function regardless of who owned the vineyards — a continuity of communal space that persists today. Opava, as capital of Austrian Silesia (a separate crown land from 1742), developed its own distinct institutional identity under the Silesian Museum (founded 1814, oldest public museum in Czech lands).