Jihlava is a statutory city in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands and the seat of the Vysočina Region.[1][2] It lies on both sides of the former border between Bohemia and Moravia.[1] According to the Czech Statistical Office, it had 54,624 inhabitants on 1 January 2025.[3]*
Location
The Jihlava District occupies the centre of the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands and lies mostly in the Jihlava Hills. Its highest point, which is also the highest point of the whole Highlands, is Javořice (837 m); the average elevation is around 540 m. The main European watershed between the Black Sea and the North Sea runs through the area, so it has few watercourses; the largest are the Jihlava River and the Brtnice stream.[2] The D1 motorway between Prague and Brno crosses the district, and the city is connected to it.[2]
History
At the end of the 12th century a Slavic village with a small church of St John the Baptist stood on a hill above the Jihlava River. When silver ore was found at the end of the 1240s, miners, craftsmen and merchants came from many parts of Europe, and a new town began to grow on the opposite bank of the river.[1] At the same time the parish church of St James and the Minorite and Dominican monasteries were being built. The regular grid of streets around a large square was laid down by the building code of King Ottokar II of 1270. The town received strong fortifications, stone houses with arcades rose around the square, and coins were minted here.[1] Jihlava was the first place in Central Europe where mining law was written down alongside town law; it was adopted by many other mining towns, and the supreme mining court sat here for centuries.[1]
By the end of the 14th century the richest silver veins had been exhausted and the mines had been damaged by earthquakes and floods. For the next three centuries the town's economy rested mainly on cloth-making.[1] After a great fire in 1523 the town was rebuilt in Renaissance style, and the Jihlava type of house with a covered courtyard appeared, with a Renaissance upper hall and arcaded loggia above the Gothic ground-floor hall.[1] During the Thirty Years' War the Swedes took Jihlava on 12 March 1645.[7] The occupation destroyed the suburbs and most of the houses, and only an eighth of the inhabitants remained; recovery took more than a hundred years. The Jesuit Church of St Ignatius with its college and grammar school dates from the last quarter of the 17th century.[1] Maria Theresa invited Dutch clothmakers to the town, and in the second half of the 18th century Jihlava was the second-largest cloth producer in the monarchy. The town gates were pulled down at the beginning of the 19th century.[1]
Jihlava was the centre of the so-called Jihlava language island with a large German population. After the Munich Agreement of 1938 the area was not ceded with the borderlands, and on 15 March 1939 the German part of the population welcomed the arriving occupation troops. After the occupation began, the synagogue, which stood in what is today the Gustav Mahler Park, burned down.[5] Since 1 January 2000 Jihlava has been the seat of the newly established Vysočina Region.[2]
Monuments
The urban heritage reserve was declared in 1951 (revised in 1982), and according to the city it contains 213 protected buildings.[1] Masarykovo náměstí, covering 3.6 ha, is one of the largest historic squares in Central Europe. Beneath the houses lie the Jihlava catacombs, formed by linking Gothic cellars, and parts of the town walls have survived.[2] The Památkový katalog (Heritage Catalogue) of the National Heritage Institute dates the Church of St James the Great to 1240–1257; it was consecrated in May 1257 and became the parish church. The north tower was built at the beginning of the 14th century and the south bell tower in the 1430s. After the fire of 1523 both towers had to be taken down and rebuilt, and in 1702 the Baroque Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows was added. The church has been a national cultural monument since 2008.[4]
In autumn 1860 the family of the composer Gustav Mahler, who was born on 7 July 1860 in Kaliště near Humpolec, settled in the house at Znojemská 4. Mahler lived in houses no. 4 and 6 from 1860 to 1875. The Gustav Mahler House is today a memorial to the composer with an exhibition on his youth in Jihlava and on the coexistence of Czechs, Germans and Jews in the town.[6]