Svitavy

Svitavy is a town of about 16,000 inhabitants in the Svitavy District of the Pardubice Region in the Czech Republic, standing on the Svitava River in the Svitavy Uplands about 57 kilometres southeast of Pardubice and 60 kilometres north of Brno. It was founded by Premonstratensian colonisation from Litomyšl around 1150, and 1256, when the bishop of Olomouc took it over, is counted as the year of its foundation. Over a hundred textile factories grew up after the railway arrived in 1849, and the town kept an industrial character. It is known as the birthplace of Oskar Schindler and as the centre of the Czech Esperanto movement, with the Esperanto Museum housed in the Ottendorfer House. Its main square is almost 500 metres long, the fourth longest in the country. The historic German name is Zwittau.