Ancient Jihlava is one of Czech Republic's most valued towns. Founded by King Wenceslas I to exploit rich silver veins in 1237-39, Jihlava experienced a breath-taking boom during the late l3th century and took a position among the Kingdom's most important cities. The King secured the development through a wise decision. He invited the leading mining experts from Europe's centres ofmining (especially from Bavaria, Saxonia, and Tirolia.) Many craftsmen and tradesmen followed in their footsteps bringing about knowledge and experience that further boosted Jihlava's boom. The town soon became breeding ground for new forms of businesses, new mining technology, and the new Mining Rules. l3th-century Jihlava embodied the triple problem of the contemporary Czech history: founding of towns, beginnings of advanced mining, and German colonisation. But Jihlava's mines did not last long and the l4th-century economy found itself based on different pillars -the crafts (beer breweries, tin smitheries, millineries, and above all, draperies) and trade. lóth-century Jihlava was one of Middle Europe's most beautiful towns thanks to the Renaissance architecture and humanistic culture, contemporary chronicles say. But the Thirty-Year War, especially the final period of 1646-48, brought Jihlava to its knees so that it has never recovered to its old glory since. But we still can see most of the beauty, mainly in the interiors of the 213 houses that were included in the Architectural Reserve. Surviving parts of the wall system with God's Mother's Gate also testify to Jihlava's old power as fortress on the Bohemian-Moravian border. The guildship system that developed in the following centuries proved deleterious to the emerging industrial entrepreneurship. The delay was made up for at the beginning of the 20th century and Jihlava became a centre of textile industry. The new growth promoted Jihlava to become natural centre of vast parts of the Bohemian-Moravian Uplands and is still a place of the historian's and nature lover's interest.

Town hall and burgher houses of various architectural styles in the Masaryk Square

The late-Gothic God's Mother's Gate with the Renaissance superstructure. It used to be part of the town defence system

Virgin Mary Assumption Church, the main nave of the late-Romanesque l3th-century basilica