Ostrava-Karviná Mining District, cultural heritage, post-industrial landscape

The study presented introduces the reader in the first part with the history of coalmining in the Ostrava-Karviná Mining District. We elucidate the beginnings of the mining, i.e. the foundation of the earliest mining works and their role in the economic development of the region. It discusses the difficult integration of the mining district in the new conditions of the Czechoslovak state (1918–1938) and the subsequent impacts of the incorporation of the mining district into the economy of the Third Reich. The post-war development took place in the wake of the nationalization of the coal industry, which after 1948 became one of the crucial branches of the economy of the Eastern Bloc. The oil crisis did not have the same impact on the mining district as it had on mining districts in Western Europe, but the mining district as a whole was marked by obsolete technologies and unprofitability. From the perspective of global economics, the beginning of the decline of the mining in the 1990s was the logical outcome of global development. The mining district like those in Western Europe had difficulties coming to terms with the impacts of mining activities, i.e. the ecological burden, post-industrial landscape and industrial cultural heritage. In the study, we have outlined the history of the musealisation of the industrial heritage, monument protection and new utilization of the industrial buildings within the framework of the transformation of the city of Ostrava into the cultural centre of the region