5
Blackamoor House
This building with brewing rights located near the Old Town Hall is one of the oldest preserved civic houses in Svitavy. It was built with a Renaissance floor plan in 1554 and is one of the few houses on the square for which we know the exact year of construction.
The families of Svitavy magistrates originally lived in the house, but in the 18th century it was rebuilt as the roadside Blackamoor Inn (German Zum Mohren). While there are no historical records explaining how the building was named, a bust of a blackamoor has been preserved on the original corner of the house. An important date in the history of the house is 1776, when Emperor Josef II stayed in the inn on his journey from the village of Květná to Brno. Not even the town fire of 1781, which completely destroyed the square, impacted the historical layout of the building. The Russian commander Korsakov stayed in the house in 1800 during the Napoleonic Wars. Thanks to the strength created by the interesting vaulting the cellar of the building was used as a depository for the town savings bank beginning in 1861. The entire complex of cellar corridors was connected with the adjacent Town Hall and other civic buildings. The building was used for commercial purposes in the 20th century and in the 1950s relatively insensitive reconstruction work was performed on the interior. Today the building houses the Svitavy Town Information Centre.