Hodonín

Hodonín is a town of about 23,000 inhabitants in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic, on the right bank of the Morava River, which forms the Czech-Slovak border in this area. It lies roughly 51 kilometres southeast of Brno in the flat Lower Morava Valley, and its western boundary follows the Kyjovka River, which feeds a system of eight fishponds. The name derives from the personal name Hodona, and the German name of the town is Göding. A castle is believed to date from the 11th century, although the 1046 document once taken as its oldest mention is demonstrably a forgery; the first credible written mention is from 1169, and Hodonín became a town in 1228. The Thirty Years' War badly damaged it, and it recovered after the castle was rebuilt as a tobacco factory in the 18th century and the railway arrived in 1841. In April 1945 it was the first town in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to be liberated from German occupation. Its main landmarks are the Church of Saint Lawrence, a Gothic building rebuilt in the Baroque style, and the Art Nouveau town hall of 1902 to 1904. It is the birthplace of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia.