Humpolec (German: Humpoletz, 1939–1945 also Gumpolds) is a town in the Pelhřimov district in the Vysočina region, 23 km northwest of Jihlava, about halfway along the D1 motorway between Brno and Prague. Approximately 11,000 inhabitants live here.
Parish Church of St. Nicholas
The Church of St. Nicholas is a Roman Catholic parish church of
the Humpolec parish-vicariate. It is built in a mixed style of early
Gothic, Baroque Gothic and Neo-Gothic. It is protected as a cultural
monument. Church of St. Nicholas is mentioned in 1233. The original
Gothic part was built in the 3rd quarter of the 13th century.
The Baroque adaptations are probably the work of Jan Blažej
Santini, as follows from the connection between his work for the
Želiv Monastery and the stylistic analysis of the building. The
builders were the owners of the estate Herálec Eleonora Kristýna,
Countess of Regal and her son Maxmilián, Count of Regal.
Humpolec was part of the Herálec estate, and although it was not
owned by the Želiv Monastery, the town parish was regularly planted
by the Želiv Premonstratensian Order. The repair of the unfinished
church, which was then unfinished in the Middle Ages and burned down
by fire, was probably considered from 18 January 1716, when the
Humpolec church was visited by Santini and Vogler, probably in order
to develop a project. However, the parish priest of Humpolec and the
Premonstratensian monastery of Želiv, Fr. Michael Hrůza, applied for
permission to rebuild it until January 8, 1720. In his request, he
wrote that he had been trying to repair his church for a long time,
some chalices and monstrances. Hrůza returned his request on April
11, 1720. However, the consistory still asked for the approval of
the Dean of Ledeč, Jan Alexander Kloffetius. On May 17, 1720, he
confirmed that the building material was already in place, but that,
according to the builders, the cost of repairing and rebuilding the
church would be much higher, as the church needed a brand new vault,
wall reinforcement, addition of a new tower and new presbytery.
Unfortunately, the author of the report did not give the names of
the builders, nor did the mentioned plan, which was sent back to the
applicant, be preserved. Then, on June 1, 1720, the consistory
granted the requested permission.
The reconstruction of the
church began in 1721 and was completed in 1722; however, according
to surviving records, the "restored church" was inspected by Abbot
Hlín on June 17, 1721. The foundation stone of the church tower was
laid in 1721 by the patroness Eleonora Kristýna, Countess of Regal,
née Metternichová, and the second foundation stone Regalu, as a
memorial record informs us, preserved in a transcript from the 19th
century. It is also said that a new vault was made and side pillars
were built around the church. The construction was carried out by
master mason Matěj Isthum. Ferdinand Neth, a master carpenter from
Želiv, made equipment (a large altar, grids, stools and choirs), of
which only the pulpit has survived. This equipment was probably
created according to Santini's design, "because the close formal
proximity to the equipment of the monastery church in Želiva is
obvious." The repair and reconstruction of the Humpolec church was
completed on August 28, 1722.
The masonry destroyed by the
fire and the supporting pillars had to be repaired. The church was
vaulted with brick cross vaults, and in the middle nave with a large
pancake. The vaults were probably decorated with Baroque-Gothic
decor. The preserved Baroque-Gothic morphology of the interior “is
relatively simple and compositionally logical. A hexagonal, small
headquarters of the sacristy in the axis of the chancel was added,
and an axial tower on the west side. The facades of the church were
plastered and divided by simple, pointed windows with stucco-modeled
panels. The west tower was lower and its masonry reached to the
ledge under the clock in its present state. The original pyramidal
roof of the tower had a small lantern, fitted with a tall and
pointed pyramidal roof, as evidenced by photographs from the end of
the last century.
During the 19th century, the Baroque main
altar and other altar buildings were removed. In the years 1893 -
1895, the church was regotized by Matěj Blecha according to the
plans of J. Martin.
Construction description
The church is
a mixture of early Gothic, Baroque Gothic and Neo-Gothic. It is
built on the ground plan of a cross with a long pentagonally closed
chancel. A hexagonal sacristy is attached behind the chancel in the
axis of the church. Transverse nave with pentagonally closed chapel
spaces. The tower stands in front of the west facade along the nave.
The neo-Gothic helmet of the tower has four cantilevered bay windows
in the corners. On the outside, the church has armrests and tall
Baroque Gothic pointed windows without tracery. The main portal is
neo-Gothic. The chancel is glazed with three fields of Baroque
Gothic cross vault and ribs at the end. The triumphal arch is
pointed with a rough wedge profile. The side chapel at the transept
is equipped with a six-part rib vault. The side spaces of the
transept are glazed with a cross rib vault. The sacristy is glazed
with a six-part vault with angled strips and in a square at the
intersection with a baroque fresco of the Last Judgment. Murals by
J. Filip on the front arches of the side chapels. Figural windows
from 1907 to 1912. The church furnishings are mostly neo-Gothic.
There is a public viewpoint on the tower.
Evangelical church
The Evangelical Church is located in Humpolec in the former district of the Czech City, today in Husova Street. He is the successor of the Tolerance Church in Zichpil. Since 2012, together with the parish and the school, it has been protected as a cultural monument of the Czech Republic. In 1785, the Church of the Toleration was erected in Zichpil, the first evangelical prayer house in Humpolec. However, evangelicals were concentrated mainly in the České město district (today's Havlíčkovo náměstí and its surroundings), Zichpil was inhabited mainly by Jews (they also had their Jewish town nearby) and Christians (they lived mainly in the area of today's Horní and Dolní náměstí). In 1852, the Evangelicals built a school in the Czech town, and two years later a rectory was added. At the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, the tolerance church ceased to be suitable for capacity, so in the years 1861-1862, a new evangelical church was built in today's Husova Street. Its construction was financed mainly from public collections and donations from Protestant countries. The author of the building design is J. Martin. In 1891, a Neo-Renaissance tower by J. Blecha from Karlín was added.
Cemetery Church of St. Jan Nepomucký - the building from 1869 was created thanks to collections and donations. The tower was built and the interior furnished in later years. It is a single-nave neo-Gothic building with a tower and three altars surrounded by a cemetery.
Tolerance Church
The Tolerance Church stands on Zichpil, the former Humpolec
district and today a street, opposite Nápravník's building, with
which it forms the Zichpil open-air museum. Across the parking lot
is adjacent to the church of St. Jan Nepomucký with a cemetery. It
has been protected as a cultural monument since 1963.
The
foundation stone for the construction of the Tolerance Church was
laid on May 18, 1785. During the construction, an order was issued
on August 26, according to which the windows could not be vaulted,
but had to be square, so the construction was suspended and the
windows had to be modified. The consecration took place on October 9
of the same year, making it one of the oldest tolerant churches in
Bohemia. At the end of the 1840s, it underwent modifications, during
which the arching of the windows was restored and a new entrance in
the façade was excavated. The old entrance from the former rectory
then remained as a side door. After the construction of a new
evangelical church in the Czech town, it functioned only as a
funeral home. Then, until 1961, it was used by the then Czechoslovak
Hussite Church. In that year, it bought the former Jewish synagogue,
and the Toleration Church subsequently again performed its funeral
function, this time of both churches. In 1976, a mourning hall was
erected near the cemetery and the tolerance church was thus unused
for more than 30 years. Since 2012, it has been open to the public
within the Zichpil open-air museum.
Parish (deanery) - Baroque building from 1732. The walls are
divided by lysine strips, windows with shambrans, in the middle on
the ground floor there is a portal ending in a segment.
Synagogue
- U Vinopalny 492
Jewish cemetery
Medova vila - a building
designed by architect Josef Gočár in a constructivist and
functionalist style. The building also includes an ornamental
garden.
The savings bank building - originally a courthouse.
After the release of the town from servitude in 1807, the town hall
was located here. In 1848, Karel Havlíček Borovský spoke from the
window as a newly elected member of the Humpolec Parliament. In
1906, Karel Kramář gave a lecture on the 50th anniversary of
Havlíček's death. In the same year, T. G. Masaryk was also here. The
current building was built in 1929 according to the design of Č.
Musil. A memorial plaque of Karel Havlíček Borovský by sculptor
Josef Šejnost from 1935 on the building.
City library building -
built in 1873 as a new town hall. The project was designed by
architect Josef Zítek. It is a representative building in the
Neo-Renaissance style. At present, the city library is located here.
City Hall - an Art Nouveau building from 1912–1914 designed by
architect F. Kavalír. Two-storey building with a segmental gable and
bay windows on the sides. A stone portal from Orlík Castle with the
year 1548 is walled up in the building. The second floor with
elements of the Neo-Baroque style. Sculptural decoration by actor
and sculptor František Fiala (Ferenc Futurist). On the ground floor
of the building is a memorial plaque of the second-war fighter ace
Josef Dygrýn.
Monument to the native anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička
and his museum
Monument to Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk - by Vincenc
Makovský with an urban design by Josef Gočár. The monument was
ceremoniously unveiled on Tyrš Square in 1937. Thanks to regime
changes - National Socialism and Communism - the monument was
removed three times and then rebuilt.
Monument to Romanian
soldiers above the railway tracks
Memorial plaque to the most
famous immigrant Hliník
Štůly under the Orlík castle - gold was
mined in the Humpolec region in the Middle Ages, either by mining
from solid rock (primary occurrence) or by panning from unpaved
rocks (secondary occurrence). Near Orlík Castle, there is an almost
half-kilometer zone of mining works in the forest, which includes a
100-meter-long (and well-preserved) main section of mining mines
with a depth of 5-7 meters with a flooded bottom. The main section
of the mines continues westwards in the form of a 20–30 m wide zone
of mines and dumps with a length of approximately 170 m, which is
followed by a series of shallow exploratory mines. To the east, the
mines merge into an interconnected system of work. The deposit was
almost completely mined. The mineralization (banded, interspersed
and exceptionally venous texture) is here bound to pararules, bed
quartz veins and lenses, and coarse-grained recrystallized and
quartz positions of erlan with sulfides. The mineralization reached
a thickness of 1-2.5 m. The gold content here ranges from 0.3 to
10.8 g per tonne. The location is one of the most interesting
monuments of medieval mining in the vicinity of Humpolec and is
protected.
Březinka gold paddy field - in the earliest times,
gold was panned here in the lower parts towards the village of
Čejov. In the 13th century to the 14th century, gold was probably
mined here, probably by mining. Furthermore, feldspar was mined here
for a short time at the beginning of the 20th century. Gold mining
was carried out near Humpolec only in these localities and in the
locality Trucbába near Humpolec-Hněvkovice.
The first written mention of Humpolec is from 1178,
when the then village was donated to Přemysl Soběslav II, but it was
probably established earlier as a guard post on the path leading
from Prague to Moravia. Later it belonged to the Teutonic Knights
and until 1325 the village belonged to the Želiv Monastery. After
1325, the village belonged to the Order of the Red Star Crusaders.
Church of St. Nicholas is mentioned in 1233; the original Gothic
part was built in the 3rd quarter of the 13th century. Later, the
village belonged to the lords of Lipá, the lords of Dubá, the lords
of Leskovec, Trčky and Lípa and the lords of Říčany. During the
Hussite wars, the city was one of the Hussite outposts.
Between the 13th and 15th centuries, silver was mined in Humpolec,
later draperies predominated. The brewery of the owners of the
Herálecký estate was founded here in 1597, and its tradition was
continued in 1991 by the businessman Stanislav Bernard, when he
built a prosperous family brewery Bernard from the bankrupt brewery.
After the Battle of White Mountain, the town was confiscated and
the owners of the Somls became owners. Subsequently, Humpolec was
owned by other families, at the time when Humpolec was owned by
Count Wolkenstein-Troszburg, the then village was promoted to a town
in 1807. In the 19th century, the cloth guild was very developed in
the town and the town was nicknamed Czech Manchester. In 1848, the
National Guard was established in the town and Karel Havlíček
Borovský became a deputy for the town. On September 1, 1894,
Humpolec was connected to the railway network. Modern alterations to
the city, made in 1939 and 1941, were designed by architect Josef
Gočár. In 1910, the district office of the Humpolec district was
established in the town, the town remained a district office until
1960, when the state administration was reorganized and Humpolec
became part of the Pelhřimov district.
Rail transport
The Humpolec railway station is the terminus on
the Havlíčkův Brod - Humpolec railway line.
Road transport
The D1 motorway passes through the cadastre of the town, which
crosses the exit I with the road I / 34 on the territory of the
neighboring Vystrkov. Then the road II. classes:
II / 129 in the
section Křelovice - Petrovice - Humpolec
II / 347 in the district
of Světlá nad Sázavou - Humpolec
II / 348 in the section Rozkoš -
Štoky
II / 523 in the section Větrný Jeníkov - Krasoňov -
Humpolec
and roads III. classes:
III / 03418 Humpolec -
Vilémov - Plačkov - Kamenice
III / 12924 Sedlice - Hněvkovice -
Humpolec
III / 12924a from the road III / 12924 to Kletečná
III / 12934 Humpolec - Brunka
III / 12935 Humpolec - Jiřice
III / 12936 II / 130 - Lhotka - Jiřice
III / 13116 Krasoňov -
Mikulášov
III / 34771 Humpolec - Světlice - Budíkov
III /
34775 Bystrá - II / 523