A tourist site born thanks to miners

KARVINÁ – When you are going by road from Orlová to Karviná, you cannot miss an interesting site on the right hand side – a considerably leaning structure. People smilingly compare it to the leaning tower in the Italian town of Pisa. It is the Church of St. Peter of Alcantara built in 1736 in the Baroque style. It leans visibly by 6.8° to the South from the vertical axis and stands in the centre of the original town of Karviná, today Doly.

The leaning is due to the extraction of coal. From 1874 coal used to be extracted from underneath it from 27 beams having a total thickness of 52.8 metre. The church, which had originally stood on a hill, sunk by 32 meters and now stands in a valley near a pond. It is the only major structure that has been preserved from the original Karviná to present day, which reminds us of the original location of the town. The remaining original buildings gave way to the miners and the landscape has changed beyond recognition.

It started to change for the better only in 1998. Before then, between 1995 and 1996, the miners stabilised and renovated this house of God. Two years later they began a comprehensive reclamation of the 22-hectare site. However, this process had been preceded by problems related to obtaining a building permit. The Environment Department had not wanted to permit the felling of the self-seeding trees at a dump of the Gabriela plant, where activities had been finished already in the 1950s. However, the reclamation would not have been possible without the felling.

The former dump was reshaped, the flooded area around Karvinský Stream was refilled and a new riverbed was formed. A total of approx. 220,000 m³ of tail rock was used for the landscaping. The reclaimed site was covered by soil and grass was planted there.

Originally, the whole site was supposed to be continuously forested. However, people started arguing that the trees would gradually hide the leaning church. With view to the protected cultural monument the original plan was changed to the planting of only groups of trees and to park arrangements.

The reclamation work also involved the repair of an access road including a turntable for buses that bring in tourists who tend to visit the church more and more often. Besides, lock-paving was done around the building and a pavement was built, interconnecting the church and the local cemetery so as to ensure safety for those who visit the cemetery.

In the past a well used to be located near the building. However, due to mining it had stopped functioning and so the miners built a new water main for the church.

The whole job worth CZK 65 million including biological reclamation was completed in the site in 2006. Nowadays the valley of Karvinský Stream with the leaning church devoted to St. Peter of Alcantara belongs to one of the attractions of the mining town of Karviná.

(Jana Theodosisová, Josef Lys)