Brno wants to make three water tanks on Yellow Hill accessible within two years

Brno – All three water reservoirs on Brno's Žlutý kopec should be accessible to the public within two years. City councillors approved this plan at their meeting today. Currently, only one of the reservoirs is provisionally accessible, and there is enormous interest in tours of it, said Deputy Mayor Jiří Oliva (ČSSD) to reporters today.

The first reservoir is currently managed by the Tourist and Information Centre of the City of Brno, which has also announced several tour dates for the summer. All of them sold out within 10 minutes. "Groups are limited to 15 people, as that is how the space is certified. In order for more people to be allowed in at once, another emergency exit must be built and the construction re-certified. At the same time, it is necessary to build entrances to the other two tanks, and we also plan to renovate the technical building, which is in poor condition and stands above the reservoirs. It could serve as a facility for the area, possibly with a café," Oliva stated.

For the city to make the area accessible, it must also build access to it, which currently leads through the neighboring building's property; the issue of parking also needs to be resolved.

The three reservoirs under Žlutý kopec, located between Tvrdého and Tomešova streets, were built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Two of them are constructed from red fired bricks without the use of steel, wood, or reinforced concrete, while the third and youngest reservoir, built in 1910, consists of two concrete tanks.

Together, these waterworks had a volume of more than 20,000 cubic meters, and water was pumped into them from the treatment plant in Pisárky. They were decommissioned in 1997, and since then they have been empty and preserved. In 2019, the Ministry of Culture declared the set of buildings a cultural monument.