Zlín is a statutory city and the centre of the Zlín Region.[1][3] According to the Czech Statistical Office, it had 74,684 inhabitants on 1 January 2025.[4] In the 1920s and 1930s it was transformed by the Baťa shoe company.[3]*
Location
The Dřevnice River flows through the city, and embankments with cycle paths run along its bed.[5] The Dřevnice rises in the region and joins the Morava in Otrokovice. The Zlín District is mostly hilly, with the Hostýn Hills reaching it in the north and the White Carpathians in the east. Elements of three ethnographic areas meet here: Haná, Moravian Slovakia and Moravian Wallachia.[3]
History
The first written mention of Zlín dates from 1322. The small town was a centre of crafts and guilds for the surrounding Wallachian settlements, which lived mainly from herding, and the seat of the owners of the estate.[1] Around 1940 the historian Karel Stloukal explained the town's name as derived from the personal name Zla with the suffix -ín; the name „Zlaté japko“ (Golden Apple) appears only in legends.[7] In 1397 Zdeněk of Šternberk extended the town's rights, and in 1509 Zlín received a royal privilege to hold annual fairs. In 1605 the town was plundered by Bocskai's troops, and in 1644 five Zlín burghers were executed after the suppression of the Wallachian uprisings. In 1849 a great fire destroyed Zlín, and in 1866 it was occupied by the Prussian army.[2]
The shoe company of the Baťa family was founded here in 1894.[2] Tomáš Baťa was elected mayor in 1923, and together with his architects, among them Jan Kotěra, František Lydie Gahura, Miroslav Lorenc and Vladimír Karfík, he turned a small town of five thousand into an agglomeration of functionalist architecture with 43,500 inhabitants.[1][2] Tomáš Baťa died in an air crash on 12 July 1932, and the company was taken over by his half-brother Jan Antonín Baťa. In 1938 the so-called Greater Zlín was created by joining five municipalities. The city was bombed in 1944, and in 1945 the Baťa works were nationalised.[2]
In 1949 the city was renamed Gottwaldov after President Klement Gottwald.[2] On 21 December 1989 the council of the South Moravian Regional National Committee decided to restore the original name, and since 1 January 1990 the city has again been called Zlín.[6] From 1949 to 1960 it was the seat of the Gottwaldov Region, Since the Zlín Region was created on 1 January 2000 the city has been its seat; the regional authority began work in 2001.[2]
Architecture and monuments
The city's landmark is the former Baťa administrative building no. 21, known as the jednadvacítka (“Twenty-One”), designed by Vladimír Karfík. The company applied for a permit for the 77.5 m building in 1936, and at the time it was the tallest building in Central Europe. The director had a mobile office measuring 6 × 6 m inside a lift. Since a reconstruction completed in 2004 the building has housed the Zlín Regional Authority and the tax office.[9] The Památkový katalog (Heritage Catalogue) of the National Heritage Institute dates the Baťa skyscraper to 1936–1939 and lists it as a cultural monument since 1958.[8] Zlín has film studios which in the 1960s were associated with the animated and trick films of Karel Zeman and Hermína Týrlová.[1]
Institutions
Tomas Bata University in Zlín was founded on 14 November 2000.[2] It is the only public university in the Zlín Region. The Museum of South-East Moravia has a permanent shoe exhibition in Zlín, and the zoo with the chateau in Lešná is one of the most visited places in the district.[3] Today's City Theatre and Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic were founded in 1946, and a film festival for children has been held in the city since 1960.[2]