Fortified Olomouc

MEDIEVAL walls were not much use against gunpowder, and the city fell to the Swedes in 1640.

They left eight years later at the end of the 30 Years War, but by then Olomouc was in ruins and had lost its pre-eminence in Moravia to nearby Brno.

Olomouc slowly recovered and was turned into a fortress city administered for the Habsburgs by German-speakers.

The modernised fortifications, now part of the city's botanical garden, proved their worth in 1758 by helping Olomouc withstand a siege by Frederick the Great's Prussians

View from the ramparts - fortunately those are not enemy tents in the distance