The hook
A handsome Moravian university town that feels like Prague without the crowds, with a giant Baroque plague column big enough to have a chapel inside it and a cheese famous for its smell.
01Why it's worth it
Olomouc was once the capital of Moravia and a major religious centre, and it kept the architecture to match: a set of grand squares, fountains, and churches in an old town far less visited than Bohemia's. Its centrepiece is the Holy Trinity Column, an enormous and exuberant Baroque monument raised in thanks after a plague, so large that its base holds a small chapel, now a UNESCO site. There is an astronomical clock too, oddly remade in the communist era with workers and scientists in place of saints. Being a lively student city keeps prices low and the pubs full, and it is proudly the home of Olomoucké tvarůžky, a pungent ripened cheese locals dare visitors to try. It is a real, unpolished Czech town rather than a set piece.
02How to experience it
Walk the two main squares for the Trinity Column, the fountains, and the socialist-era astronomical clock. Eat in a student pub and brave the stinky tvarůžky cheese. It rewards a half-day and a fraction of Prague's crowds and costs.
From the locals
Olomouc's endorsement carries weight because of who gave it. A Czech local, listing the places they would send a visitor after Prague, put it in the same breath as Brno and Pilsen and gave it the superlative: "Olomouc — one of the most picturesque cities in the Czech Republic."
That is the whole quote, and it is thin on detail, so this dossier does not dress it up into a chorus. What it does establish is the thing worth knowing: Olomouc is a domestic pick rather than an international one. Czechs rate it; the Prague–Krumlov circuit skips it; the squares are consequently full of students rather than tour groups.