Moravia

Moravia is a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic, one of the three historical Czech lands alongside Bohemia and Czech Silesia, naturally defined by the basin of the Morava river and covering about 22,349 square kilometers of mountains to its west and east with valleys running through its center. The region is home to roughly 3 million of the Czech Republic's 10.9 million people, and its inhabitants, called Moravians, form a distinct Czech subgroup with their own historical identity separate from that of Bohemians. From 1348 until 1918 Moravia was a crown land successively of the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian Empire, and Austria-Hungary, before becoming part of Czechoslovakia after the First World War and later the modern Czech Republic. Brno serves as the region's largest city and historical capital, a role Olomouc had held until its capture during the Thirty Years' War.