Holy Trinity Church

Holy Trinity Church in the former suburbs Jaktař was built outside Opava, just like St. Catherine’s Church, which was built a hundred years earlier. The church underwent an extensive reconstruction that substantially changed the building and wiped off the originally late medieval character.

The history of the church dates back to 1463 when on the site of common pastures near a millrace by the road to Hlubočec an area was designated for a new church with an oval fenced cemetery. The construction did not take long, but owing to religious wars between the supporters of George of Poděbrady and Matthias Corvinus, furnishing and consecration of the church were delayed. In 1481 the main altar was decorated with a panel painting of the Holy Trinity. The painting, which was presumably authored by a local artist, survived to this day. Gold and silver devotional objects discovered in the church give evidence of its importance. The church was passed on to the Teutonic Order in 1782, and seven years later it was finally consecrated.

The one-nave church has a pentagonal presbytery with sequenced buttresses and ribbed vault. Until 1782 there was a hermitage next to the church, which was then replaced with a chaplain. The church underwent some changes – in 1732 a Baroque bell tower was built, and in the course of the 18th century the interior of the church was decorated with the painting of St. Urban by Ignác Raab, and the painting Immaculate by an unknown author. In 1854 the church got a new hipped slate roof and a late Empire octagonal wooden bell turret. At the turn of the 20th century when a tram line led from the town to the suburbs and a new park was established in the vicinity of the church, the cemetery and chaplain were closed. In the years 1905–1907 the original turret was replaced with a brick octagonal turret with a helmet and an open lantern. In 1997 the church was reconstructed after being heavily damaged by floods.

Erasmus Kreuzinger’s reports give us an idea about the events that took place in the church before mid-19th century: every morning masses were held in the church, and on the Holy Trinity Day, there was a procession attended not only by the locals, but also foreigners, especially from the Prussian part of Silesia. After renovation in 1856, Archduke Maxmillian, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order visited the church. The Teutonic Order was in charge of the church until the end of World War II. As a matter of interest, in 1683 when King John Sobieski’s army marched past Opava to fight the Turks besieging Vienna, some of the army camped by the church.