Church of St. Joseph Don Bosco

The Roman Catholic Church of St. Joseph in Ostrava was built in 1937. It is located in Moravská Ostrava on Vítkovická Street near Nová Karolina, the ÚAN, and the Don Bosco tram stop.
It was constructed between 1935 and 1937 by the Salesians of Don Bosco, who cared for poor and endangered youth and had also established a religious house here since 1934. The three-nave church is an atypical building. Due to subsidence, a reinforced concrete slab was laid under the entire structure. The Vítkovice steelworks produced 16 steel pillars, and the structure was assembled using cranes, after which the brick infill was added. At that time, this method was a novelty.
In 1942, the Nazi regime seized the Salesian institution, and in 1950, the communists did as well. In 1973, they cleverly closed the church under the pretext that the building was needed by the army and turned it into a gymnasium and later a military archive.
It was only managed to be reclaimed in 1990. However, it was not easy to restore it after the army. First, with great enthusiasm, the interior partitions that had been built during the totalitarian regime, which had blocked both side aisles, were demolished. It was also necessary to remove the flooring that the soldiers had laid over the original pavement. The floor was nailed to laid beams with longer nails that penetrated through to the other side and created indentations in the pavement, as is evident to this day. On December 8, 1990, the church was reopened.