Zábřeh

Zábřeh is a town of about 13,000 inhabitants in the Šumperk District of the Olomouc Region in the Czech Republic, standing on the Moravská Sázava River between the Mohelnice Depression and the Zábřeh Highlands. The name means behind the riverbank, a reference to the river that flows through it, and its former German name was Hohenstadt. The first written mention dates from 1254, and it was called a town in 1278. For centuries it belonged to noble families, above all the Tunkl of Brníčko and later the Liechtensteins, who held it from 1622 until 1848. A fire at the end of the eighteenth century destroyed the old townscape, and the Prague to Olomouc railway made it an industrial and commercial centre in the nineteenth century, notably for textiles. Its main landmark is Zábřeh Castle, now the municipal office, and the town lies in the Haná ethnographic region and is twinned with Handlová in Slovakia and Ochsenfurt in Germany.